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ELEMENTARY GUIDE TO 
LITERARY CRITICISM 

BY 

F. V. N. PAINTER, A.M.. D.D. 

Professor of Modern Laxguages ix Roaxoke College 
Author of "A History of Edl'cation," "History 
OF English Literature," "Introduction 
to American Literature," etc. 



BOSTOX. U.S.A. 
GINX & COMPAXY, PUBLISHEES 
Cl&e atl)en9ettm press 

1903 



Copyright, 1903 
By F. y. N. PAINTER 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



PREFACE 



The aim of the present work, as is indicated by its 
name, is to help the young student in literary criticism. 
It is a sort of laboratory manual, in which he will find 
specific direction for a comprehensive analysis of the 
principal kinds of literature. It is intended to show 
him the various points in relation to form, content, and 
spirit, to which in succession he is to devote his atten- 
tion. It is hoped that the book will give definiteness 
and delight to literary study, which, for lack of such 
a guide, has so often been vague, unsatisfactory, and 
discouraging. 

A glance at the table of contents will clearly reveal 
the plan. The work is divided into three parts, the 
first of which treats of fundamental principles. In 
three chapters the nature of criticism, the relation of 
the author to his work, and the aesthetic principles 
I underlying literary art are briefly discussed. The facts 
and principles here presented are designed to give a 
clearer and deeper insight into the nature and processes 
of criticism. 

Part Second is chiefly concerned with the external 
, elements of literature. In three chapters it briefly 
discusses the diction, the various kinds of sentences, 
i the use of figures of speech, and the different species of 
\ style as determined partly by the nature of the discourse 

iii 



iv 



PREFACE 



and partly by the mental endowments of the writer. 
It is intended to embrace the rhetorical elements of 
form. 

In Part Third the leading kinds of literature are 
discussed, and the general principles governing each 
are presented. Special effort has been made to throw 
light upon the nature and structure of poetry, fiction, 
and the drama ; and it is hoped that the chapters 
in which these subjects are treated will be found par- ' 
ticularly interesting and helpful. 

Each chapter is followed by a list of review ques- 
tions and by illustrative and practical exercises. The 
aim has been to prepare not merely a theoretical but 
especially a practical text-book, for which, it is believed, 
there exists a felt and acknowledged need. It is hoped 
that this little work will contribute in some measure 
to make literature one of the most delightful, as it 
is surely one of the most important, of all branches 
of study. 

F. y. N. PAINTER. 

Salem, Virginia, 

August 15, 1903. 



I 



CONTEXTS 



PART FIRST 
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1. Xature and Office of Criticism 1 

II. The Author axd his Work 19 

III. Some ^FIsthetic Prixciples 34 

PART SECOXD 

RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 

TV. Words, Sentences, Paragraphs 55 

Y. Figures of Speech 68 

VI. Style 84 

I PART THIRD 

KINDS OF LITERATURE 

VII. Xature and Structure of Poetry . , . 103 

VIII. Kinds of Poetry 130 

IX. Epic and Dramatic Poetry 115 

X. Xature and Forms of Prose 156 

XL Essays and Oratory 167 

I XII. Xature and Classification of Fiction . . . 178 

I ^ 



LITERARY CRITICISM 



Paet Fie ST 

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 

CHAPTER I 
NATURE AND OFFICE OF CRITICISM 

1. Purpose of Literary Study. The study or reading of 
literature ordinarily has a threefold purpose, — knowl- 
edge, pleasure, and culture. This purpose shows us 
both the character of the literature which should be 
read and tlie manner in which it should be read. As a 
rule we should read only books of recognized excellence, 
and read them with sympathetic intelligence. Trashy 
books, whatever pleasure they may give, add but little 
to knowledge or culture ; and immoral books often 
leave an ineradicable stain upon the soul. Fortunately 
there are good books enough to satisfy every taste and 
supply every need. 

2. Necessity of Comprehending. A literary work can- 
not be of much use till it is understood. It is useless 
to read books entirely beyond our grasp. In the perusal 
of an author we should endeavor to enter as fully as 
possible into his thoughts and feelings. Our primary 
aim should be not to criticise but to comprehend. 
This is sometimes, especially for the young student, a 

1 



2 



FU^^^DAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



difficult task. It requires patient, painstaking labor; 
but in the end it brings a rich reward in profit, enjoy- 
ment, and power. 

In the study of a literary classic we should aim at 
more than a mere intellectual apprehension of its tech- 
nique and other external features. The soul should rise 
into sympathy with it, and feel its spiritual beauty. All 
literary study that falls short of this high end, however 
scholarly or laborious it may be, is essentially defective. 
The externalities of a piece of literature are compre- 
hended in vain, unless they lead to a fuller understanding 
and appreciation of its spirit and life. Unfortunately, 
at the present time, philology and literary analysis fre- 
quently stop short of the realization of the supreme end 
of literarj^ study. What should be only a means is 
sometimes exalted to an end. 

3. Definition of Criticism. Criticism, as its etymol- 
ogy indicates, is the act of judging. Literary criticism 
endeavors to form a correct estimate of literary produc- 
tions. Its endeavor is to see a piece of writing as it is. 
It brings literary productions into comparison with rec- 
ognized principles and ideal standards ; it investigates 
them in their matter, form, and spirit; and, as a result 
of this process, it determines their merits and their 
defects. The end of literary criticism is not fault-find- 
ing but truth. The critic should be more than a censor 
or caviler. He should discover and make known what- 
ever is commendable or excellent. At its best, crit- 
icism is not a mere record of general impressions but 
the statement of an intelligent judgment. It is not 
biased or vitiated by prejudice, ignorance, or self-interest; 



XATURE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 



3 



but, proceeding according to well-defined principles, it 
is able to trace the steps by which it reaches its ultimate 
. conclusions. 

4. History of Criticism. Criticism is a natural attend- - 
ant of all forms of art. Literary criticism is almost as 
old as literature itself. Xo sooner had a writer pro- 
duced a literary work, even in the most ancient times, 
than his contemporaries proceeded to express their judg- 
ments concerning it. Among the ancient Greeks Plato 
and Aristotle were both critics ; and tlie latter's work on 

Poetics is still valuable for its discussion of funda- 
mental principles. Quintilian, Cicero, and Horace were 
distinguished Roman critics ; and the poet's Ars Poetica^ 
read in every college course, is an admirable presentation 
of many critical principles. But it is in modern times, 
and particularly during the nineteenth century, that crit- 
icism received its highest development. In England 
not a few of its leading literary men — Dryden, Pope, 
Addison, Johnson, Coleridge, Jeffrey, Macaulay, Carlyle, 

i Matthew Arnold — have been critics ; and in America 
we meet with such honored names as Poe, Emerson, 
Whipple, Lowell, Stedman, and many others. In 

|j recent years criticism has greatly gamed in breadth 
and geniality. 

5. Standard of Criticism. All criticism involves com- 
parison. For every species of literature there is an 
ideal of form, content, and spirit, Avhich serves the in- 
telligent critic as a standard of judgment. This ideal 
is based on a realization of the recognized principles of 
literary art. These principles pertain to diction, struc- 
ture^ matter^ and. spirit or purpose, No one will deny 



4 



h 1 1 N I ) A M K N r A L I M ; I N ( M PI J 0 S 



tluit the diction should be well cliosen ; that the struc- 
ture of the sentences sliould be correct and clear; and 
th:it, in the c^ase of poetry, the laws of versihcation 
shouhl 1h' obsei'N I'd. These elements contribute to excel- 
lence of I'oiin. In addition to these external elenicnts 
there shonld be unity of tlionglit, synnuetry of presen- 
tation, truth of statement, and sincerity and self-restraint 
in sentiment. These elements give substantial worth 
to the mattei" or content, of literature. Besides all this 
there is a grace or elegance or foi-ce, proceeding from 
tl)e pei'sonality of tlie writer and transcending ;dl I'ules 
of art, that gives a peculiar charm to the best Hterature. 
Sometimes tlie personal element or s[)iiit of a work is so 
pleasing that it mort^ than counterbalances defects of 
form, and wins its \Nay to the popular lieart. 

6. Classic Writers. Our classic writers are those 
wlio ]ia\'e most nearly approached tlie ideal. The writ- 
ings of A(hlison, (loldsmitli, Irving, Lowell, and others, 
embody in a, high degree excellence of matter and form; 
and in addition to this there is a pervading spirit that 
imparts an irresistible charm to their works. While 
the woi'ks of no one writer, whether ancient or modern, 
can be taken as an absolute standard of judgment, the 
perusal of classic works is exceedinglj^ helpful. These 
works familiarize us with what is excellent in thought, 
expression, and spirit. They cultivate the taste ; and at 
length it becomes impossible for the student to be satisfied 
A\ ith what is incorrect, sloA^enly, tawdry, or untruthful. 

7. Requisites of Criticism. Many things are required 
for the best criticism. First (^f all, the critic ought to 
be a person of sound judgment. It is in a measure true 



XATURE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 5 



that critics, like poets, are born, not made." The critic 
should liave the power to divest himself of prejudice ; 
and, hke a judge upon the bench, should decide every 
question by the law and the evidence. He should be 
a man of broad sympathies and wide culture ; nothing 
that is human should be foreign to him. He should 
be able to enter into the feelings of every class and to 
appreciate the principles of every school. He should 
have a strono^ imao-ination to enable him to realize the 
conditions of other ages or of other social arrangements. 
Without these natural gifts of a sound judgment, broad 
sympathy, and vigorous imagination, the critic is apt to 
be limited, narrow, or unjust in his criticism. The his- 
tory of literature reveals numberless critical blunders ; 
indeed, almost every attempt to introduce new literary 
forms, as in the case of "Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Keats, 
has met with bitter opposition from uncatholic critics. 

8. Criticism an Acquired Art. Criticism is an art 
that may in large measure be acquired. The requisite 
faculties may be developed by a course of study. The 
principles that are to guide the critical judgment are 
provided in grammar, rhetoric, logic, aesthetics, and 
moral science. Wide reading in various departments 
will banish narrowness and provmcialism. Study and 
experience will bring a cosmopolitan culture. Though 
few are capable of attaining to eminence as critics, it is 
possible for every one to accjuire some degree of literary 
taste and to form an intelligent judgment of a literary 
work. 

9. Diversity in Criticism. Diversity of judgment is 
a notable feature in the history of criticism. It tends 



6 



FUXDAMENTAL PRmCIPLES 



to shake one's confidence in the critical art. It often 
happens that what one critic praises another condemns. 
This fact has been presented by Irving, with dehghtful 
humor. " Even the critics," he says in the conclusion 
of the ''Sketch Book," "whatever may be said of them 
by others, the author has found to be a singularly gentle 
and good-natured race; it is true that each has in turn 
objected to some one or two articles, and that these 
individual exceptions, taken in the aggregate, would 
amount almost to a total condemnation of his work; 
but then he has been consoled by observing, that what 
one has particularly censured, another has as particu- 
larly praised; and thus, the encomiums being set off 
against the objections, he finds his work, upon the whole, 
commended far beyond its deserts." 

10. Sources of Diversity. Tliis diversity of literary 
criticism, which at first sight tempts us to question the 
value of the art, is easily traced to its causes. These 
are found not in the nature of the art but in the man- 
ner of its application. Many reviewers nowadays do 
not take the pains to read the works they pass judg- 
ment upon. Their estimate is based on little more 
than a rapid survey of the preface and table of con- 
tents. This fact renders a considerable part of current 
newspaper criticism comparatively worthless. It is still 
worse when to this superficiality is added a flippant 
manner that seems intent on nothing but a display of 
the critic's smartness. Other critics write from the stand- 
point of a particular sect or school of thought, and 
undervalue or overvalue a work through a partisan 
spirit. Defective or erroneous principles are used as 



XATURE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 7 



standards of judgment. Still others are impressionists; 
and instead of testing a work by recognized criti- 
cal canons, they simply record how ''it strikes them." 
Differences of taste and character naturally produce 
some diversity of view, but in general the painstaking 
and impartial application of critical principles to a liter- 
ary work will yield pretty uniform results. The merits 
and defects of the work will be brought to light, and 
conscientious and broad-minded critics will be found in 
the main to agree in their praise or their censure. 

11. Utility of Criticism. Criticism is not, as has some- 
times been supposed, a parasitic growth on literature. 
It is a handmaid of literature ; it belongs to the house- 
hold of literature. Though it does not deserve to 
rank with the great creative forms of literature, such 
as the epic, the drama, or the novel, it is capable of a 
high degree of excellence. Some of the greatest Eng- 
lish writers, as we have seen, have been critics. Not 
a few of the critical essays of De Quincey, Macaulay, 
Carlyle, Arnold, Lowell, and others, have an honorable 
place in the literature of the English-speaking world. 

Literary criticism has a distinct value for three 
classes of persons. To the young student it gives a 
clear insight into hterary form, and cultivates his taste 
for literary excellence. To the author it is at once a 
stimulant and wholesome restraint : it rewards him for 
what is good and chastises him for what is bad. To 
the public it is useful in pointing out what books are 
worth reading and in showing the principles by which 
a work is to be judged. It elevates the popular taste 
and intelligence. 



8 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



12. Materials of Criticism. All literature is, in some 
sense, material for criticism. It may be examined, tested 
by critical laws, and its worth estimated in the class to 
which it belongs. But as a rule literary criticism is 
confined to literature in the narrower sense ; that is to 
say, to literature that aims at artistic excellence. This 
includes the various forms of poetry and the principal 
kinds of prose, — history, oratory, essays, and fiction. 
These various kinds of literature, in their higher forms, 
aim at presenting their subject-matter in such a way as 
to minister to the pleasure of the reader. 

13. Molding Influences. In criticising it is important 
to recognize certain general molding influences in liter- 
ature. Among the most potent of thqse influences are 
race^ epochs and surroundings. We cannot fully under- 
stand any work of literature, nor justly estimate its 
relative excellence, without an acquaintance with the 
national traits of the writer, the general character of 
the age in which he lived, and the physical and social 
conditions by which he was surrounded. These con- 
siderations, independently of specific critical canons 
that determine intrinsic excellence, must be taken into 
account when the critic wishes to decide upon the rela- 
tive value of a work. It is evidently unjust to demand 
in writers of an uncultivated period the same delicacy 
of thought, feeling, and expression that is required in 
the writers of an age of refinement and intelligence. 
The indecencies in Chaucer and Shakespeare are to be j 
attributed to the grossness of their times. | 

14. The Artistic Element. There is an artistic element ' 
in literature upon which the value of any work largely 



NATUEE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 



9 



depends. There is art in the choice and marshaling of 
words. Furthermore, every department of hterature — 
history, poetry, fiction — has a separate and definite pur- 
pose. In the successful realization of this purpose each 
species or form of literature must wisely choose its 
means. This conscious and intelligent adaptation of a 
means to an end is art. Apart from the careful selec- 
tion and arrangement of words in sentences, the historian 
chooses the incidents he will relate, the order in which 
they will appear, the relative prominence they will have, 
and the symmetry and completeness of his whole work. 
The novelist selects or invents his story, portrays from 
actual life or creates a number of characters, constructs 
or modifies his plot, and unfolds the movement toward 
a predestined end. In all this there is a constant exer- 
cise of the creative faculty ; and the complete product 
is as much a work of art as is a painting or statue, 
which requires the same sort of intellectual effort. 

15. Matter and Form. In any literary production 
we may distinguish between the thoughts that are pre- 
jsented and the manner in which they are presented. 
We may say, for example, ''The joys of heaven are 
infinite"; or, ascending to a higher plane of thought 
and feeling, we may present the same thought in the 
^language of Moore in his " Paradise and the Peri " : 

V " Go, wing thy flight from star to star, 

I From AYorld to luminous world, as far 

j As the universe spreads its flaming wall ; 

J Take all the pleasures of all the spheres, 

{ And multiply each through endless years. — 

One minute of Heaven is worth them all." 



10 



FUNDAME^^TAL PRINCIPLES 



It is thus evident that the interest and worth of liter- 
ature depend largely on the manner in which the thought 
and emotion are expressed. In general the matter of 
discourse, which aims at the communication of ideas, 
is of more importance than the form. Words without 
thought, no matter how skillfully and musically they 
may be arranged, are nonsense. But in the lighter 
sorts of prose, which aim at entertainment, and in 
poetry, which is dependent on meter and harmony, 
form is of preeminent importance. The story of " Rip 
Van Winkle," for instance, owes its perennial charm to 
the inimitable grace and humor with which Irving has 
told it. 

There is a natural and intimate relation between 
matter and/orm; one is the soul, the other is the body. 
Form is not to be unduly magnified by itself; it is 
excellent only when it is a fitting embodiment of the 
thought and feeling expressed. Form should be molded 
by the thought and emotion, as the rose or oak is shaped 
by the potency of its inner life. When, in any way, 
the form is out of keeping with the subject, the effect 
upon a cultivated taste is a disagreeable incongruity. 
In the language of Horace, — 

"Sad words befit the brow with grief o'erhung; 
Anger, that fires the eyeball, bids the tongue 
Breathe jjrond defiance ; sportive jest and jeer 
Become the gay; grave maxims the severe." 



NATURE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 11 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. TThat is the threefold object of literary study? TThat kind 
of literature should be read? Why? 2. What should be our 
primary aim in studying an author? What does this often 
require ? What should be aimed at besides outward form ? 
What mistake is frequently made ? 3. What is criticism ? 
What is the purpose of literary criticism ? How is this purpose 
accomplished ? ^\'hat sources of error are mentioned ? 4. What 
is said of the history of criticism? Xame two Greek critics. 
Who were the great Roman critics ? Mention some distinguished 
English and American critics. What is said of recent criticism ? 

5. What serves as a standard of criticism ? On what is this ideal 
based ? Mention some elements of excellent form : some elements 
of excellent content. What is said of the personal element or spirit ? 

6. Who are our classic writers ? Why study classic works ? 

7. What natural gifts should a critic have ? Why should he have 
broad sympathies ? What is said of critical blunders ? 8. How 
is criticism an acquired art? What is the advantage of wide 
reading? What may every one hope to acquire? 9. What is 
said of diversity in criticism? Illustrate. 10. What are the 
sources of diversity? What is said of much newsj^aper criticism? 

I What is meant by impressionists? What is said of painstaking 
■and impartial criticism? 11. What is said of the relation of 
•criticism to literatm^e? What of its rank? For what three 
classes has it a special value ? How ? 12. What are the mate- 
I rials of literary criticism? To what class of literature is it 
tchiefly devoted? 13. Xame three great molding influences. 
Why should they be considered ? Illustrate. 14. What is meant 
by the artistic element ? In what does the historian's art 
consist? the novelist's? 15. What may be distinguished in 
any literary production ? Illustrate. On what does the worth 
Df literature largely depend? Which is the more important, 
.matter or form? Where is form specially important? Illustrate. 
jWhat is the relation of matter to form? When the form is out of 
sleeping with the matter^ what is the result ? 



12 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following critiques should be studied with the 
view of answering such questions as these : 

Does the critic seek the truth? Is he prejudiced? Is he 
chiefly concerned with matter or form f Is his judgment sound ? 
Is he broad or narrow in his sympathies ? Does he judge by mere 
impressions? Is he superficial or thorough? Does he belong to 
a particular school? Is his criticism in any way helpful? Does 
he try to interpret the author ? Is he chiefly concerned to show 
his own learning or brilliancy? Is he genial and tolerant? Is 
he dogmatic and intolerant ? Is he courteous and kind ? Is he 
ill-mannered and unkind ? What points are criticised ? 

HEADLEY'S "SACRED MOUNTAINS" 

The Reverend Mr. Headley (why will he not put his full title 
in his title-X3ages ?) has in his Sacred Mountains" been reversing 
the facts of the old fable about the mountains that brought forth 
the mouse — parturiunt montes; nascitur ridiculus mus — for in 
this instance it appears to be the mouse — the little ridiculus 
mus — that has been bringing forth the mountains," and a great 
litter of them, too. — Poe. 

BYRON'S "HOURS OF IDLENESS" 

The poesy of this young Lord belongs to the class which 
neither gods nor men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not 
recollect to have seen a quantity of verse with so few deviations 
in either direction from that exact standard. His effusions are 
spread over a dead flat, and can no more get above or below 
the level, than if they were so much stagnant water. As an 
extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly forward 
in pleading minority. We have it in the title-page, and on the 
very back of the volume ; it follows his name like a favorite part 
of his style. Much stress is laid upon it in the preface, and the 

ii 



NATURE AND OFFICE OF CRITICISM 13 



poems are connected v^'ith. this general statement of Ms case, by 
particular dates, substantiating the age at which each was 
written. — Lord Brougham in Edinburgh Review. 

KEATS'S "ENDYMION" 

The author is a copyist of ]Mr. Hunt, but ten times more 
tiresome than his prototype ; his nonsense is gratuitous, he writes 
it for its own sake, and more than rivals the insanity of his 
master. He ^Tites at random the suggestions of his rhyme with- 
out having hardly a complete couplet to endorse a complete idea 
in the book. If any one should be bold enough to purchase it, 
and patient enough to get beyond the first book and find any 
meaning, we entreat him to make us acquainted with his success; 
we shall then return to the task which we now abandon in 
despair. — Quarterly Review. 

WORDSWORTH 

The simple Wordsworth, framer of a lay 
As soft as evening in his favorite May ; 
Who warns his friend to shake off toil and trouble. 
And quit his books, for fear of growing double"; 
Who, both by precept and example, shows 
That prose is verse, and verse is merely prose ; 
Convincing all, by demonstration plain, 
Poetic souls delight in prose insane. 
And Christmas stories, tortured into rhyme, 
i Contain the essence of the true sublime ; 

i Thus, when he tells the tale of Betty Foy, 

i The idiot mother of ''an idiot boy," 

3 A moon-struck silly lad who lost his way, 

^ And, like his bard, confounded night with day; 

fl t So close on each pathetic part he dwells, 

^ I And each adventure so sublimely tells, 

A ^ That all who view the " idiot in his glory," 

:i Conceive the bard the hero of the story. 

' Byron in "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers." 



14 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



CROKER'S EDITION OF BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON 

This work has greatly disappointed us. Whatever faults we 
may have been prepared to find in it, we fully expected that it 
would be a valuable addition to English literature ; that it would 
contain many curious facts, and many judicious remarks; that 
the style of the notes would be neat, clear, and precise ; and that 
the typographical execution would be, as in new editions of clas- 
sical works it ought to be, almost faultless. We are sorry to 
be obliged to say that the merits of Mr. Croker's performance 
are on a par with those of a certain leg of mutton on which 
Dr. Johnson dined, while travelling from London to Oxford, and 
which he, with characteristic energy, pronounced to be as bad 
as bad could be, ill fed, ill killed, ill kept, and ill dressed." 
This edition is ill compiled, ill arranged, ill written, and ill 
printed. — Macaulay in Edinburgh Review, 

CARLYLE 

There is in Carlyle's fiercer and more serious passages a fiery 
glow of enthusiasm or indignation, in his lighter ones a quaint 
felicity of unexpected humor, in his expositions a vividness of 
presentment, in his arguments a sledge-hammer force, all of 
which are not to be found together anywhere else, and none 
of which is to be found anywhere in quite the same form. And 
despite the savagery, both of his indignation and his laughter, 
there is no greater master of tenderness. Wherever he is at 
home, and he seldom wanders far from it, the weapon of Carlyle 
is like none other, — it is the very sword of Goliath. 

Saintsbury. 

GRAY 

Against the right of Gray to be considered one of the leading 
English men of letters no more stringent argument has been pro- 
duced than is founded upon the paucity of his published work. 
It has fairly been said that the springs of originality in the brain 

I 



NATURE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 15 



of a great inventiYe genius are bound to bubble up more con- 
tinuously and in fuller volume than could be confined within 
the narrow bounds of the poetry of Gray. But the sterility 
of the age, the east wind of discouragement steadily blowing 
across the poet's path, had much to do with this apparent want 
of fecundity, and it would be an error to insist too strongly on 
a general feature of the century in this individual case. When 
we tm-n to what Gray actually wrote, although the bulk of it is 
small, we are amazed at the originality and variety, the fresh- 
ness and vigor of the mind that worked thus tardily and in 
miniature. — Gosse. 

SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare has no peculiarity, no importunate topic ; but 
all is duly given ; no views, no curiosities ; no cow-painter, no 
bird-fancier, no mannerist is he: he has no discoverable egotism; 
the great he tells greatly ; the small, subordinately. He is wise 
without emphasis or assertion : he is strong, as nature is strong, 
who lifts the land into mountain slopes withotit effort, and by 
the same rule as she floats a bubble in the air, and likes as 
well to do the one as the other. This makes that equality of 
power in farce, tragedy, narrative, and love-songs ; a merit so inces- 
sant, that each reader is incredulous of the perception of other 
readers. — Emerson. 

DOWDEX'S "LIFE OF SHELLEY" 

This Shelley biography is a literary cake-walk. The ordi- 
nary forms of speech are absent from it. All the pages, all the 
paragraphs, walk by sedately, elegantly, not to say mincingly, in 
their Sunday-best, shiny and sleek, perfumed, and with houton- 
nieres in their button-holes ; it is rare to find even a chance sen- 
tence that has forgotten to dress. If the book wishes to tell us 
that Mary Godwin, child of sixteen, had known afilictions, the 
fact saunters forth in this nobby outfit : Mary herself was not 
unlearned in the lore of pain." — Mark Twain. 



16 



FUNDAMENTAL PKINCIPLES 



MILTON'S '^LYCIDAS" 

One of the poems on which much praise has been bestowed, 
is " Lycidas " ; of which the diction is harsh, the rhymes uncer- 
tain, and the numbers unpleasing. What beauty there is we 
must therefore seek in the sentiments and images. It is not to 
be considered as the effusion of real passion; for passion runs 
not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks 
no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arthur and 
Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and " fauns with cloven heel." 
Where there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief. 

Samuel Johnson. 

EMERSON 

And, in truth, one of the legitimate poets Emerson, in my 
opinion, is not. His poetry is interesting, it makes one think ; 
but it is not the poetry of one of the born poets. I say it of him 
with reluctance, although I am sure that he would have said it of 
himself ; but I say it with reluctance, because I dislike giving 
pain to his admirers, and because all my own wish, too, is to say 
of him what is favorable. But I regard myself, not as speaking 
to please Emerson's admirers, not as speaking to please myself ; 
but rather, I repeat, as communing with Time and Nature con- 
cerning the productions of this beautiful and rare spirit, and as 
resigning what of him is by their unalterable decree touched with 
caducity, in order the better to mark and secure that in him which 
is immortal. — Matthew Arnold. 

GEORGE ELIOT 

What peculiarities of George Eliot's are likely to leave a 
strong impress after her? I answer, she, of all novelists, has 
attacked the profound problems of our existence. She has taught 
that the mystery worthy of a great artist is not the shallow mys- 
tery device, but the infinite perspective of the great, dark enigmas 
of human nature ; that there is a deeper interest in human life 



^1 



XATURE AXD OFFICE OF CRITICISM 17 



seen in tlie modern, scientific daylight, than in life viewed through 
a mist of ancient and dying superstitions ; that the interest of 
human character transcends the interest of invented circum- 
stances ; that the epic story of a hero and a heroine is not so 
grand as the nattiral history of a community. She, first of all, 
has made cross sections of modern life, and shown us the busy 
human hive in the light of a great artistic and philosophic intel- 
lect. — Edward Egglestox. 

WORDSTVORTH 

He has won for himself a secure immortality by a depth of 
intuition which makes only the best minds at their best hours 
worthy, or indeed capable, of his companionship, and by a homely 
sincerity of human sympathy which reaches the humblest heart. 
Our language owes him gratitude for the habitual purity and 
abstinence of his style, and we who sjDeak it. for having embold- 
ened us to take delight in simple things, and to trust ourselves to 
our own instincts. — Lowell. 

PARADISE LOST 

It is requisite that the language of an heroic poem should be 
both perspicuous and sublime. In proportion as either of these 
two qualities is wanting, the language is imperfect. Perspicuity 
is the first and most necessary qualification ; insomuch that a 
good-natured reader sometimes overlooks a little slip even in the 
grammar or syntax, where it is impossible for him to mistake 
the poet's sense. Of this kind is that passage in Milton, wherein 
he speaks of Satan, — 

''God and his Son except, 
Created thing nought valued he nor shunned," — 

and that in which he describes Adam and Eve, — 

"Adam the goodliest man of men since born, 
His sons, the fairest of her daughters Eve." 

Addisox. 



18 



FUNDAME^^^TAL PRINCIPLES 



FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 

From the first to the last page of Nietzsche's writings the 
careful reader seems to hear a madman, with flashing eyes, wild 
gestures, and foaming mouth, spouting forth deafening bombast; 
and through it all, now breaking out into frenzied laughter, now 
sputtering expressions of filthy abuse and invective, now skipping 
about in a giddy agile dance, and now bursting upon the auditors 
with threatening mien and clenched fists. So far as any mean- 
ing at all can be extracted from the endless stream of phrases, it 
shows, as its fundamental elements, a series of constantly reiter- 
ated delirious ideas, having their source in illusions of sense and 
diseased organic processes. Here and there emerges a distinct 
idea, which, as is always the case with the insane, assumes the 
form of an imperious assertion, a sort of despotic command. 

Max Nordau. 

Note 

In addition to these brief extracts the student should be 
encouraged or required to read a number of complete reviews 
both in our popular periodicals and in books of literary criti- 
cism, with the view of determining the critic's temper, culture, 
judgment, thoroughness, points of view, etc. The older style 
of criticism is illustrated in Addison's articles on Milton in the 
" Spectator " and Johnson's Lives of the Poets." For the 
elaborate review style the student might read some of the crit- 
ical essays of Macaulay, Carlyle, and Lowell. Our principal 
reviews, magazines, and other periodicals, as well as recent works 
on English literature, will supply abundant material to show 
the less elaborate and generally more genial criticism of the 
present day. 



I 



CHAPTER II 



THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK 

16. Personality of the Author. Every literary work 
reveals, to a greater or less degree, the personality of 
the author. Every literary production may be regarded 
as the fruitage of the writer's spirit ; and there is good 
authority for saying that men do not gather grapes 
of thorns or figs from thistles," A book exhibits not 
only the attainments, culture, and literary art of the 
writer but also his intellectual force, emotional nature, 
and moral character. Wide attainments are revealed 
in breadth of view and in mastery of large resources. 
Culture is exhibited in a general delicacy of thought, 
feeling, and expression. Literary art is shown in the 
choice of words and in their arrangement in sentences 

I and paragraphs. The artistic sense, without which a 
finished excellence is not attainable, reveals itself in the 
proportion, symmetry, and completeness of a work. 

17. Thought and Feeling. The intellectual and the 
' emotional nature of a writer is clearly reflected in his 

works. Intellectual force, for example, is recognized 
in the firm grasp of a subject, in the marshaling of 
i details toward a predetermined end, and in the vigor of 
j utterance. The Essays of Macaulay, however much 
they may lack in delicate refinement of thought and 
feeling, display a virile force of intellect; and many 

19 



20 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



a page of Carlyle fairly throbs with energy of spirit. 

A large, sensitive soul manifests itself in sympathy with \ 

nature and human life. The " wee, modest, crimson- , 

tipped " daisy, and the limping wounded hare touched 3 

the tender sympathies of Burns ; and it was Wordsworth : 
who said, — 

" To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears/' 

There is no class of society, from kings to beggars, from 
queens to hags, with which Shakespeare has not entered 
into sympathy, thinking their thoughts and speaking 
their words. 

18. Moral Character. The moral character of an 
author appears in his general attitude toward truth 
and life. A strong moral sense appears in a firm 
adherence to right and an unblinded condemnation of 
wrong. A genial, charitable spirit is shown in a kindly 
disposition to overlook the weaknesses of men and to 
magnify their virtues. Life may be looked upon as some- 
thing earnest, exalted, divine ; or it may be regarded as 
insignificant, wretched, and ending at death. 

It is character that gives fundamental tone to litera- 
ture ; and, as Matthew Arnold has said, the best results 
are not attainable without ''high seriousness." The 
difference between the flippant and the earnest writer 
is easily and instinctively recognized. No one can read 
Ruskin, for instance, without feeling his sincerity and 
integrity, even in his most impracticable vagaries. In 
Addison, Goldsmith, and Irving we find a genial, uplift- 
ing amiability ; and Whittier, in his deep love of human 



THE AUTHOR AXD HIS WOKK 



21 



freedom and justice, appears as a resolute iconoclast 
and reformer. 

19. Authorship and Character. It is sometimes sup- 
posed that the art of authorship can be divorced from 
the personality of the writer. In serious authorship 
this supposition is a mistake. The best writing is more 
than grace of rhetoric and refinement of intellectual 
culture. Back of all outward graces there is need of a 
right-thinking and truth-loving soul. One of the essen- 
tial things in the training of a great waiter is the 
development of an upright, noble character. Milton 
was right in maintaining that the great poet should 
make his life a noble poem. As a rule the writers of 
the world's greatest classics have been men of sincerity, 
truth, and honor. Such was the character of Plato, 
Vergil, Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Words- 
worth, Tennyson, Browning, and many others. Our 
best American writers, almost without exception, have 
been distinguished for moral worth. In men like Burns, 
Byron, and Heine, the absence of a high moral purpose 
has detracted, in spite of their unquestioned intellec- 
tual power, from the excellence of a large part of their 
writings. 

20. Autobiographic Elements. Our knowledge is of 
two kinds : the first comes from our own experience ; 
the other, from the experience and testimony of our 
fellow-men. Personal experience carries with it a con- 
viction and power that do not usually belong to the 
knowledge received from the testimony of others. What 
we have experienced has become a part of our lives. 
The writers of vitality and power are those who draw 



22 



FUNDAMENTAL PKINCIPLES 



largely on their individual resources, — the treasures of 
their own experience. They write, not from the mem- 
ory, but from the heart. If they borrow from others, 
they assimilate the information, and thus vitalize it before 
giving it out again. 

The best part of our knowledge is that which comes 
to us through experience and assimilation. It is a per- 
manent possession. When an author's experience, either 
in an ideal or a realistic form, is introduced in his work, 
it becomes an interesting biographical element. It pre- 
sents a part of his life, and often it exhibits the trans- 
forming and glorifying power of his genius. In the 
drama She Stoops to Conquer," for example, Gold- 
smith has turned to excellent account a humiliating 
incident of his youth. His " Deserted Village " is full 
of childhood reminiscences. Scott's poems and novels 
are in large measure only an expansion of the mediaeval 
and other lore that he enthusiastically collected in his 
youth and early manhood. George Eliot's earlier novels 
are filled with the scenes and characters of her early 
life ; and Dickens's best novel, " David Copperfield," is 
largely autobiographical. An author's best work — that 
which possesses the greatest degree of interest and vital- 
ity — is generally that which springs from the treasure 
of his deepest experience, and is the fullest expression 
of his individual thought and feeling. 

21. View of Life, Every writer of originality and 
power takes a fundamental view of life. He has settled 
convictions of some sort in regard to the world in which 
he lives. Sometimes this view comes from religion 
and sometimes from philosophy or science, though in 



THE AUTHOR AXD HIS WORK 



23 



any case it is apt to be influenced by the writer's phys- 
ical condition. German pliilosophy has influenced many 
able writers, — Coleridge, Carlyle, Emerson, and others in 
England and America; and at the present time the theory 
of evolution is leaving a deep impress on literature. 

Whence came this magnificent universe ? What is 
the origin and destiny of man ? Is the general drift of 
human affairs upward or downward ? These are great 
fundamental questions, and the answers we give them 
lie at the bottom of our thinking and give tone to our 
writing. The world is not the same to the Christian 
theist and to the agnostic. Human life lias a deeper 
significance to the man who believes in the loving- 
providence of God than to the man who believes only in 
the existence of matter and natural law. The man who 
believes in the presence and sovereignty of God in all 
things looks hopefully to the future. He is optimistic 
rather than pessimistic. The presence of an exuberant 
vitality reveals itself in a cheerful, buoyant tone. Scott's 
exuberant spirit forms a pleasing contrast with Carlyle's 
dyspeptic cynicism. 

It is often highly important to understand the funda- 
mental beliefs of a writer. His works may be in a 
measure unintelligible till his standpoint is fully under- 
stood. Sometimes his various writings are only an 
expansion and application of one or two great funda- 
mental principles. The works of Herbert Spencer, for 
example, are in the main an elaboration of the theory 
of evolution. Byron represented a skeptical reaction 
against the conventional manners and beliefs of his day. 
The essential feature of Emerson's work is found in a 



24 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



single sentence in " Nature." " We learn," he says, 
that the Highest is present to the soul of man, that 
the dread universal Essence, which is not wisdom, or 
love, or beauty, or power, but all in one, and each 
entirely, is that for which all things exist, and that by 
which they are ; that spirit creates ; that behind nature, 
throughout nature, spirit is present ; that spirit is one, 
and not compound; that spirit does not act upon us 
from without, that is, in space and time, but spiritually, 
or through ourselves." 

22. Literary School. In like manner it is interesting 
and sometimes illumining to know the literary school 
or tendency to which a writer belongs. Every author 
has his limitations and idiosyncrasies. First of all, he 
may be a writer of prose alone or of poetry alone. In 
prose he may confine himself to a single department, as 
fiction or history ; or in poetry he may be chiefly lyric, 
didactic, or dramatic. Within these narrower spheres 
he may identify himself with a single tendency or group 
of writers. In history he may be philosophic or narra- 
tive ; in fiction he may be a romanticist or a realist ; in 
poetry he may be subjective or objective in his treat- 
ment of themes. Scott's romanticism, for instance, which 
delights in mediaeval scenes and incidents, is very un- 
like Dickens's realism, which depicts the scenes and 
incidents of actual contemporary life. George Eliot's 
psychologic novels are different from those of either 
Scott or Dickens. Bryant's clear descriptions of nature 
stand in striking contrast with Poe's mystical melodies. 

23. Mood and Purpose. It is important to understand 
the mood and purpose of an author. We are not in a 



THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK 



25 



position fairly to judge a work until we know its spirit 
and object. Until we know whether the writer is play- 
ful or earnest, joyous or sad, satirical or serious, we can- 
not give his words the right tone and value ; and until 
we see clearly what he is driving at, we cannot properly 
estimate the successive steps in his production nor judge 
of its worth as a whole. 

The moods expressed in literature are exceedingly 
various. Since literature is the expression of the intel- 
lectual life of man, it embodies the various moods and 
passions to which human nature is subject. Sometimes, 
for example, there is laughing humor, as in Holmes's 
'^The Deacon's Masterpiece." Sometimes there is vio- 
lent anger, as in Byron's " English Bards and Scotch 
Reviewers." We feel his unrestrained wrath, as he 
exclaims, — 

Prepare for rhyme — I '11 publish right or wrong ; 
Fools are my theme, let satire be my song." 

Sometimes the mood is one of pensive meditation, as 
when Gray sits alone in the country churchyard amid 
deepening twilight : 

" The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 

The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, 
The plowman homeward plods his w^eary way. 
And leaves the world to darkness and to me." 

Sometimes it is a righteous indignation that blazes 
and burns, as when Carlyle exclaims, in the presence 
of selfishness and wrong : " Foolish men imagine that 
because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is 
no justice but an accidental one, here below. Judgment 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, 
some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is as sure 
as death ! In the center of the world- whirlwind, verily . 
now as in the oldest days, dwells and speaks a God. ] 
The great soul of the world is just^ 

Often the mood or spirit of gifted writers is some- 
thing too intangible to be firmly grasped, yet its pres- j 
ence is felt as a pervasive and delightful atmosphere. I 
A work is sometimes suffused with the divine touch of 
genius, as the delicate and indescribable hues of autumn ^ 
glorify the valleys and mountains. While hovering near , 
the earth for a time, the spirit of genius, as in Shakes- 
peare and Ruskin, sometimes suddenly and spontane- \ 
ously soars to regions of supernal splendor, — altitudes 
of beauty absolutely inaccessible to ordinary and unaided 
mortals. 

The purpose of a literary work, like its mood or 
spirit, may be various. In a measure it varies with the J 
department of literature to which the work belongs, a 
The purpose of history, which brings before us the 
achievements of the past, is chiefly instruction. . The 
oratory of the pulpit and the forum aims at persuasion. ,i 
Fiction aims primarily at entertainment, though it may r 
also be made the vehicle for religious, sociological, or 
moral teachings. Poetry aims at pleasure by means of 
melody, felicity of expression, the picturing of moods 
and scenes, and the narration of interesting incidents or 
important events. When the purpose of a production 
is clearly apprehended we are prepared to judge of the 
wisdom of the author in his choice and adaptation of 
means. 



THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK 



27 



24. Study of an Author's Life. The foregoing consid- 
erations show us the value of an acquaintance with an 
author's life. Without this acquaintance we are not 
prepared, in many cases, to understand or judge his pro- 
ductions. A good biography will acquaint us with the 
circumstances in which his talents were developed, and 
disclose to us the autobiographic materials which have 
been embodied in his works. It will reveal to us his 
views of life and his principles of art. It will show us, 
in short, the man behind the work, and thus help us to 
grasp the full significance of his utterance. 

No one is absolutely independent of his surroundings. 
Men are frequently led, and sometimes driven by them, 
into the lines of work which they pursue. Hawthorne's 
stories, for the most part, grew out of his New England 
life. Had he been brought up south of the Potomac, 
they would have been different. Had Irving never gone 
to England, he would not have written ^'Bracebridge 
Hall"; and had he not sojourned in Spain, he would 
not have written " Alhambra " and the " Life of Colum- 
bus." Byron's Childe Harold " is but a poetic record 
of his travels. Thus it is seen that an author's work, in 
large measure, grows out of his surroundings and expe- 
rience, and cannot be thoroughly understood without 
an acquaintance with his life. It sometimes happens, 
as Shelley has sung in his interesting Julian and 
i Maddalo," that 

" Most wretched men 
Are cradled into poetry by wrong ; 
They learn in suffering what they teach in song." 



28 



FU^^DAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

16. How is a book related to its author? What does it exhibit ? 
What is said of the artistic sense ? 17. How is intellectual force 
revealed? How does a sensitive nature show itself? Illustrate. 
18. In what does the moral nature appear ? What gives funda- 
mental tone to literature ? Illustrate. 19. What must be back 
of the best writing? What was Milton's opinion of the poet? 
What is said of the world's great classics ? 20. Whence does our 
knowledge come ? What gives powder and vitality to a piece of 
literature ? What is meant by autobiographic elements ? Illustrate 
from Goldsmith and Dickens. 21. What is said of a writer's 
fundamental views ? Whence do they come ? Illustrate. What 
questions lie at the basis of our thinking ? Illustrate. What has 
physical vitality to do with literature ? What thought dominates 
Spencer's w^orks ? What is the dominant belief of Emerson ? 
22. Mention some of a writer's limitations. Explain the difference 
betw^een Scott and Dickens ; between Bryant and Poe. 23. Why 
is it important to know the mood and purpose of an author? 
Why are the moods different ? Give examples of different moods. 
Explain the general purpose of history, oratory, fiction, and poetry. 
Why should we know the purpose of an author ? 24. Why study 
the biography of an author ? What will it reveal to us ? What 
have surroundings to do with an author? Give illustrations. 
What is the quotation from Shelley? 



THE AUTHOR AXD HIS WOKK 29 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following selections should be studied with refer- 
ence to such questions as these : 

What light does the selection throw on the author ? Is he a 
man of large attainments ? Does it show refinement of thought 
and feeling ? Does it display literary art ? Has it virile force ? 
Does it show a true sense of right ? Is there a large, noble nature 
back of it ? Does it grow out of the author's personal experience ? 
Has it the force of conviction ? How does the author conceive of 
the world? What does he think of God? How does he regard 
human life ? Is he hopeful or pessimistic ? Is he a writer of prose, 
poetry, or both ? To what school of writing does he belong ? 
What is the mood or spirit, — humorous, buoyant, serious, sad, 
ironical, angTy, genial, urbane ? What is its purpose, — to instruct, 
please, persuade ? 

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the 
latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So 
long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes 
back to a man after he has seen the round of pleasure and busi- 
ness, eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and 
taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the 
ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sm-e 
to come back to him as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground 
and stay there. — Charles Dudley Warxer. 

The end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents 
by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to 
love him, to imitate him, to be like him. as we may the nearest 
by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the 
•heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection. 

Milt ox. 

We are like lambs in a field, disporting themselves under the 
eye of the butcher, who chooses out first one and then another for 
his prey. So it is that in our good days we are all unconscious 



30 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



of the evil Fate may have presently in store for us — sickness, 
poverty, mutilation, loss of sight or reason. — Schopenhauer. 

Alas ! 't is true I have gone here and there. 

And made myself a motley to the view ; 

Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear, 

Made old offences of affections new ; 

Most times it is that I have looked on truth 

Askance and strangely. — Shakespeare. 

In order to secure my credit and character as a tradesman, I 
took care not only to be in reality industrious and frugal, but to 
avoid the appearances to the contrary. I dressed plain, and was 
seen at no places of idle diversion. I never went out a fishing or 
shooting ; a book, indeed, sometimes debauched me from my work, 
but that was seldom, was private, and gave no scandal ; and to 
show that I was not above my business, I sometimes brought 
home the paper I purchased at the stores through the streets on a 
wheelbarrow. — Franklin. 

Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not 
higher than the average, some rhetorical affluence and great glib- 
ness of speech, what is the career in w^hich, without the aid of 
birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation 
in English society ? Where is the Goshen of mediocrity in which 
a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruc- 
tion, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted nar- 
rowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety ? Let 
such a man become an evangelical preacher ; he will then find it 
possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial 
knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with 
a high reputation for sanctity. — George Eliot. 

Careless seems the great Avenger ; history's pages but record 
One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and the Word ; 
Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne, — 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own. 

Lowell. 



THE AUTHOR AND HIS WORK 



31 



Thus I live in the world rather as a spectator of mankind than 
as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a specu- 
I lative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever 
meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed 
in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors 
ji in the economy, business, and diversions of others better than 
those who are engaged in them ; as standers-by discover blots, 
which are apt to escape those who are in the game. I never 
!l espoused any party with violence, and am resolved to observe an 
exact neutrality between the Whigs and Tories, unless I shall 
be forced to declare myself by the hostilities of either side. 

Addisox. 

Out — out are the lights — out all I 

And over each quivering form. 
The curtain, a funeral pall. 

Comes down with the rush of a storm ; 
And the angels, all pallid and wan, 

Uprising, unveiling, affirm 
That the play is the tragedy Man," 

And its hero the Conqueror Worm. — Poe. 

The essays professedly serious, if I have been able to execute 
ray own intentions, will be found exactly conformable to the pre- 
cepts of Christianity, without any accommodation to the licen- 
tiousness and levity of the present age. I therefore look back on 
this part of my work with pleasure, which no praise or blame of 
man can diminish or augment. I shall never envy the honors 
which wit and learning obtain in any other cause, if I can be 
numbered among the writers who have given ardor to virtue and 
confidence to truth. — Samuel Johnsox. 

What tho' on hamely fare we dine. 
Wear hodden gray, and a' that ; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine — 

A man 's a man for a' that. 
For a' that, and a' that. 

Their tinsel show, and a' that ; 
The honest man, though e'er sae poor. 
Is king of men for a' that, — Burns. 



32 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



I said to myself that my hero should work his way through 
life as I had seen real living men work theirs ; that he should 
never get a shilling he had not earned ; that no sudden turn 
should lift him in a moment to wealth and high station ; that 
whatever small competency he might gain, should be won by the 
sweat of his brow ; that before he could find so much as an arbor 
to sit down in, he should master, at least, half the ascent of the 
Hill of Difficulty " ; that he should not even marry a beautiful 
girl or a lady of rank. As Adam's son he should share Adam's 
doom, and drain, throughout life, a mixed and moderate cup of 
enjoyment. — Charlotte Bronte. 

Day set on Norham's castled steep, 
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, 

And Cheviot's mountains lone : 
The battled towers, the donjon keep, 
The loophole grates, where captives weep, 
The flanking walls that round it sweep, 

In yellow lustre shone. 
The warriors on the turrets high, 
Moving athwart the evening sky, 

Seemed forms of giant height; 
Their armor, as it caught the rays, 
Flashed back again the western blaze. 

In lines of dazzling light. — Scott. 

It is a restful chapter in any book of Cooper's when somebody 
does n't step on a dry twig and alarm all the reds and whites for 
two hundred yards around. Every time a Cooper person is in 
peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is 
sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred handier 
things to step on, but that would n't satisfy Cooper. Cooper 
requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't 
do it, go and borrow one. In fact the Leather Stocking Series 
ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series. 

Mark Twain. 



THE AUTHOR AXD HIS WORK 



33 



Live and- love. 
Doing both nobly, because lowlily ; 
Live and vork. strongly, because patiently I 
And. for the deed of Death, trust to God 
That it be vrell done, unrepented of. 
And not to loss. And thence with constant prayers 
Fasten your souls so high, that constantly 
The smile of your heroic cheer may float 
Above all floods of earthly agonies, 
Pmufication being the joy of pain. — Mrs. Browning. 



XuTE 

The autobiographic elements in Goldsmith's Deserted Vil- 
lage " and Vicar of AVakefield.'* in Charlotte Bronte's Shirley " 
and " Villette," in Dickens's David Copperfield " and George 
Eliot's "Mill on the Floss." will be found interesting and helpful 
studies. In each case a good biography of the author will give 
the necessary information to the student. 



CHAPTER III 
SOME ESTHETIC PRINCIPLES 

25. Esthetics. The science of beauty in general is 
called Esthetics, to which we have to look for some 
of the principles that are to guide our critical judg- 
ment. Unfortunately for us, the science of beauty has 
not yet been fully and satisfactorily wrought out, and 
the ablest writers, from Aristotle to Herbert Spencer, 
exhibit great diversity of view. There are two main 
theories of beauty : the one makes beauty subjective, 
or an emotion of the mind ; the other makes it objec- 
tive, or a quality in the external object. Without 
entering into the intricacies and difficulties of the dis- 
cussion, beauty will here be regarded as that quality 
in literature which awakens in the cultivated reader a 
sense of the beautiful. This sense of the beautiful is 
a refined and pleasurable feeling ; and, as we shall see, 
it is traceable to a variety of sources. 

26. Literary Taste. Literary taste is that power or 
faculty of the mind which apprehends and appreciates 
what is beautiful and artistic in literature. It embraces 
two elements : first, the apprehension of the sesthetic 
quality ; and secondly, an appreciation or emotional 
response to its appeal. These two elements are not 
always equally developed in the critic ; and it fre- 
quently happens that an artistic literary production 

34 



SOME AESTHETIC PEINCIPLES 



35 



affords exquisite pleasure without a clear apprehen- 
sion of the aesthetic elements from which the pleasure 
springs. 

In literary criticism, as has already been shown, the 
standard of taste is the ideal, developed by an applica- 
tion of necessary and recognized principles, which the 
intelligent critic is able to form in every department of 
literature. The capacity of taste is a natural gift ; but, 
like other powers of the mind, it is capable of great 
development. It is cultivated by a study of the prin- 
ciples of beauty and by a contemplation of beautiful 
objects in nature and art. Bad taste exhibits itself 
in a failure to apprehend and appreciate what is genu- 
inely beautiful ; it often mistakes defects for excellences. 
A refined taste responds to what is delicate in beauty, 
and a catholic taste recognizes and responds to beauty 
of every kind. The critic who would do honor to his 
office must have a taste both refined and catholic. 

27. Esthetic Elements. Literary beauty may per- 
tain either to the form or to the content. Deferring to 
subsequent chapters the elements of external beauty, we 
here consider the elements of internal beauty. Though 
beauty of form and beauty of content may thus be dis- 
tinguished, they are always combined in works of the 
highest excellence. Both alike have their source in 
the cultivated, creative spirit of the writer. They 
cannot be effectually learned by rule ; and the best 
training for successful authorship is the development 
of the intellectual and moral faculties. 

Vividness of description is a frequent source of liter- 
ary beauty. Scenes, objects, and events are sometimes 



36 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



SO presented as to become visible to the inner eye. 
Thus Tennyson describes the flinging of Arthur s sword: 

The great brand 
Made lightnings in the splendor of the moon." 

Carlyle was a master of graphic description, and in 
a few touches he thus brings De Quincey before us : 
" One of the smallest man figures I ever saw ; shaped 
like a pair of tongs, and hardly above five feet in all. 
When he sate, you would have taken him by candle- 
light for the beautifuUest little child ; blue-eyed, spark- 
ling face, had there not been something, too, which 
said, 'Eccovi — this child has been in hell!"' 

Meditative reflection, when aptly associated with cir- 
cumstance or occasion, may become a pleasing source 
of beauty. When employed by way of introduction, 
it may, as frequently in Irving and Hawthorne, strike 
the keynote of what follows. Sometimes it gives natu- 
ral'expression to the vague thought or feeling that had 
been produced in the reader by the preceding narra- 
tive and that would otherwise have remained unsatis- 
fied. In the darkness and silence of night the poet 
hears the striking of a deep-toned bell. Naturally he 
thinks of the flight of time. 

" The bell strikes one. We take no note of time 
But from its loss : to give it then a tongue 
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, 
I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, 
It is the knell of my departed hours." 

A meditation may, as a conclusion, impart a satisfy- 
ing completeness to a piece. Nothing could be finer. 



SOME ESTHETIC PRINCIPLES 



37 



for example, than Addison's reflections at the close of 
his essay on the tombs of Westminster Abbey: "When 
I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of 
envy dies in me ; when I read the epitaphs of the beau- 
tiful, every inordinate desire goes out ; when I meet 
with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart 
melts with compassion ; when I see the tomb of the 
parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving 
for those whom we must quickly follow. When I see 
kings lying by those who deposed them, when I con- 
sider rival wits placed side by side, or the holy men 
that divided the world with their contests and disputes, 
I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little 
competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When 
I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died 
yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider 
that great day when we shall all of us be contempora- 
ries, and make our appearance together." 

Harmony of thought and expression is another source 
of excellence. The thought should be clothed in a per- 
fect body, so that nothing can be added or subtracted 
without marring the beauty. The following stanza from 
Holmes's The Last Leaf " will serve for illustration : 

" The mossy marbles rest 
On the lips that he has prest 

In their bloom ; 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb." 

When, in addition to perfect harmony between spirit 
! and form, the sound re enforces the sense, there is an 



38 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



added element of beauty. The intellect is thus assisted 
in imaging or realizing the scene. As the heroine 
returns to her palace in Tennyson's " Godiva," — 

All at once 

With twelve great shocks of sound, the shameless noon 
Was clashed and hammered from a hundred towers." 

A well-known illustration is furnished in Pope's 
''Essay on Criticism": 

Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blow^s, 

And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows ; 

But when loud surges lash the sounding shore, 

The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar." 

The felicitous expression of some well-known truth 
or experience is always pleasing. In its happiest form 
such an expression is received as the final embodiment 
of its truth. It is henceforth taken up by the multi- 
tude and quoted as having the authority of a sacred 
text. Pope tells us, for example, that 

^' To err is human ; to forgive, divine " ; 
and also that 

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 

But no other English writer has equaled Shakes- 
peare in the number of felicitous expressions that have 
passed into current use. His works are a veritable mine 
of jeweled phrases. We often feel, for example, that 
somehow there is a mysterious power controlling our 
lives ; and this experience he voices in the well-known 
lines, — 

" There 's a divinity that shapes our ends, 
Rough-hew them how we will." 



SOME AESTHETIC PEINCIPLES 



39 



Yet at the same time, recognizing the truth of human 
freedom, he declares, — 

" Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, 
Which we ascribe to heaven ; the fated sky- 
Gives us free scope, only doth backward push 
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull." 

High spiritual truth, in fitting expression, is a source 
of great beauty. There are three great provinces of 
thought, — man, nature, and God. The last is the 
greatest of all ; and the highest achievement of litera- 
ture is to lead us to a new or fuller appreciation of 
his character. As we look upon the irrepressible and 
unending conflict between good and evil in this world, 
we are sometimes tempted to doubt a favorable issue; 
but Lowell tells us, in self-evidencing words, that 

" Behind the dim unknown 
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own." 

To Ruskin the various phenomena of nature brought 
a sweet message : " All those passings to and fro of 
fruitful shower and grateful shade, and all those visions 
of silver palaces built about the horizon, and voices of 
moaning winds and threatening thunders, and glories 
of colored robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in our 
hearts the acceptance, and distinctness, and dearness of 
the simple words, ' Our Father, which art in heaven.' " 

Another principal source of literary beauty is found 
jin a worthy expression of noble thought and sentiment. 
This may be regarded as the soul of enduring litera- 
jture, and it is as exhaustless as the human mind itself. 
The dauntless love of liberty that breathes through 



40 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



Patrick Henry's famous speech is thrilling in its elo- 
quence : " What is it that gentlemen wish ? What 
would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, 
as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery ? 
Forbid it. Almighty God ! I know not what course 
others may take, but, as for me, give me liberty, or 
give me death ! " 

Carlyle conceived of nature as the vesture of God; 
and, as he speaks of the universe, this thought lifts his 
style to great majesty : " Oh, could I transport thee 
direct from the beginnings to the endings, how were 
thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming in the 
Light-sea of celestial wonder ! Then sawest thou that 
this fair Universe, were it in the meanest province 
thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; 
that through every star, through every grass-blade, and 
most, through every Living Soul, the glory of a pres- 
ent God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time- 
vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides 
Him from the foolish." 

Love is a perennial inspiration both in prose and 
poetry. It partakes of the divine, for God is love." 
Its highest manifestations, whether in the family, among 
relatives and friends, or between lovers, are always 
beautiful; and perhaps Browning was not far wrong 
when he sang, — 

" There is no good in life but love — but love ! 
What else looks good, is some shade flung from love ; 
Love yields it, gives it worth." 

The portrayal of noble character is always inspir- 
ing. It appeals to the better side of our nature, and 



SOME .ESTHETIC PRIXCIPLES 



41 



strengthens our confidence in humanity. No literary 
art can confer immortahty on what is ignoble. The 
fiction that is devoted to obscene realism, whatever may 
be the prestige of its authors or its current vogue, is 
surely doomed. Only that which is morally good is des- 
tined to live through the ages. The genial Dickens will 
always be more popular than the satirical Thackeray. 
Boswell's ''Life of Johnson" owes its principal charm 
not to any trick of style, but to the honest, rugged 
piece of manhood it brings before us. Only a man of 
V Luther's heroic spirit could have inspired this magnifi- 
' cent tribute in Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Worship 

• " I will call this Luther a true great man ; great in 
- intellect, in courage, affection, and integrity ; one of 
' our most lovable and precious men. Great, not as a 
^ hewn obelisk, but as an Alpine mountain, — so simple, 

• honest, spontaneous, not setting up to be great at all; 
■ there for quite another purpose than being great ! Ah 
" yes, unsubduable granite, piercing far and wide into 
i the heavens ; yet in the clefts of it fountains, green, 
f beautiful valleys with flowers ! A right spiritual hero 

and prophet ; once more, a true son of nature and fact, 
? for whom these centuries, and many that are to come 

yet, will be thankful to Heaven." 
: Heroic self-sacrifice strongly appeals to us. When- 
ever a man or woman gives up self for the good of 
I others, we intuitively admire and honor the deed. The 
I story of Thermopylae, the leap of Curtius into the yawn- 
ing chasm, the charge of the Light Brigade, — 

"... though the soldier knew 
Some ODe had blundered," — 



42 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



are instances of heroic self-sacrifice which the world is 
unwilling to forget. There is a charm in Tennyson's 
Godiva " or his Enoch Arden " beyond the reach of 
mere art ; it is found in the noble spirit of the heroine 
who replies to the taunt of her husband, — 

" But I would die " ; 

and in the deep self-renunciation of the hero who, in 
heartbreaking anguish, prayed, — 

" Help me not to break in upon her peace." 

The beauty of a life of simplicity and benevolence is 
seen in the immortal Vicar of Wakefield. His unaffected 
goodness has made him dear to successive generations. 
In like manner we pay a spontaneous tribute to Chaucer's 
" poure parson of a toune," and to the preacher of the 
"Deserted Village": 

" A man he was to all the country dear, 
And passing rich with forty pounds a year ; 
Remote from towns he ran his godly race, 
Nor e'er had changed, nor wished to change, his place. 
Unskilful he to fawn, or seek for power, 
By doctrines fashioned to the varying hour ; 
Far other aims his heart had learned to prize, 
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise/' 

The fitting description of scenes and incidents of 
grandeur imparts dignity and charm to a production. 
Grandeur is of two kinds : first, the grandeur or sublim- 
ity of natural objects, such as the ocean, a storm, an 
earthquake, or other exhibitions of tremendous power ; 
and secondly, the moral sublime, in which the heroic 
soul rises superior to dangers and death. Milton's 



SOME ESTHETIC PEINCIPLES 



Paradise Lost " abounds in grave and sublime passages. 
Byron reaches the sublime in many of the descriptions 
of " Childe Harold," of which the following will serve 
for illustration : 

Far along 

From peak to peak, the rattling crags among, 
Leaps the live thunder ! Xot from one lone cloud, 
But every mountain now hath found a tongue, 
And Jura answers, through her misty shroud, 
Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud." 

Perhaps no finer instance of the moral sublime is 
to be found than in the bearing of Luther before the 
Imperial Diet in the city of Worms. He was con- 
fronted by the chief dignitaries of Church and Empire. 
The emperor himself, Charles V, was present. " Will 
you, or will you not, retract?" solemnly demanded the 
speaker of the Diet. " Unless," replied the intrepid 
reformer, unless I am convinced by the testimony of 
Holy Scripture or by clear and indisputable reasoning, 
I cannot, and will not, retract anything ; for it is unsafe 
for a Christian to do anything against his conscience. 
Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me. 
Amen ! " 

Another source of beauty is found in tenderness and 
pathos. These feelings appeal to the gentler side of 
our nature. The pathos may arise from various causes, 
— from bereaved affection, from fond memories, from 
ij sore disappointments, or from helpless suffering. Every 
one is familiar with Dickens's description of the death of 
little Nell in " Old Curiosity Shop." Irving's story of 
"The Broken Heart" is deeply pathetic. The deathbed 



44 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



scene of Colonel Newcome in Thackeray's great novel 
is notable for its simple pathos : " At the usual even- 
ing hour the chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas 
Newcome's hands outside the bed^ feebly beat time. 
And just as the last bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile 
shone over his face, and he lifted up his head a little, 
and quickly said ' Adsum ! ' and fell back. It was the 
word used at school, when names were called ; and lo, 
he, whose heart was that of a little child, had answered 
to his name, and stood in the presence of his Master." 

There is a tender regret in Hood's little poem, ''I 
Remember " : 

" I remember, I remember, 

The fir-trees dark and high ; 
I used to think their slender tops 

Were close against the sky; 
It was a childish ignorance, 

But now 't is little joy 
To know I 'm further oft' from heaven 

Than when I was a boy." 

The ludicrous often adds charm to literature. It is 
divided into two species, — wit and humor. Wit con- 
sists in the discovery of remote analogies or relations, 
and produces an amusing surprise. It has various 
forms. In the pun^ which is a rather low order of wit, 
there is a play on the meaning of words. Punning 
is an art easily acquired; but a pun is usually an 
impertinence to be excused only by its felicity. Hood 
was one of the most ingenious of punsters ; and in his 
ballad, Faithless Nelly Gray," the wit of each stanza 
is found in a pun. 



SOME .5:STHETIC PRIXCIPLES 45 

" Ben Battle ^as a soldier bold, 
And used to war's alarms; 
But a cannon-ball took off his legs, 
So he laid down his arms." 

Satire ridicules the follies and vices of men, and is 
frequent in both ancient and modern literature. Some- 
times it is good-natured, but oftener it is bitter. Swift's 
Tale of a Tub " is a fierce attack upon ecclesiastical 
divisions, while Pope's ^'Dunciad," which impales many 
of his contemporary writers, almost ruined the reputa- 
tions it touched. Addison in the Spectator is genial 
in his satire. Byron is a master of powerful satire, 
and in the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers " he 
indiscriminately lampoons his contemporaries. For 
example : 

Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here, 
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear ? 
Though themes of innocence amuse him best, 
Yet still obscurity 's a welcome guest. 
If inspiration should her aid refuse 
To him who takes a Pixy for a muse. 
Yet none in lofty numbers can surpass 
The bard who soars to elegize an ass. 
How well the subject suits his noble mind ! 
' A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind ! ' " 

1 A parody is a burlesque imitation and degradation 
of something serious. In his song, Those Evening 
^ Bells," Moore wrote in pensive mood, — 

1 " And so 't will be when I am gone ; 

That tuneful peal will still ring on, 
While other bards shall walk these dells, 
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells." 



46 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



But in Hood's parody of the same title, this stanza 
is travestied as follows: 

" And so will be when she is gone ; 
That tuneful peal will still ring on, 
And other maids with timely yells 
Forget to stay those evening bells." 

The other principal form of the ludicrous is humor. 
It is wit modified by a genial or sympathetic feeling. 
It has its origin in the disposition or character, while 
wit springs alone from the intellect. It often per- 
vades an entire production. While wit generally breaks 
out in brief and sudden flashes, humor is frequently 
diffused through an entire work like a delicious fra- 
grance. Addison's Sir Roger de Coverley papers in the 
Spectator are delightful examples of delicate humor. 
Hood's " Up the Rhine " is a rich commingling of wit 
and humor. Dickens's " Pickwick Papers " and Mark 
Twain's "Innocents Abroad" are humorous works of 
a broader type. Irving's minor writings are suffused 
with a delightful humor. And no one who has read 
the humorous beginning of the "Vicar of Wakefield" 
is likely to forget it : "I was ever of opinion, that 
the honest man who married and brought up a large 
family, did more service than he who continued single 
and only talked of a population. From this motive, I 
had scarcely taken orders a year, before I began to think 
seriously of matrimony, and chose my wife, as she did 
her wedding-gown, not for a fine glossy surface, but for 
such qualities as would wear well." 



SOME ESTHETIC PKINCIPLES 



47 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

25. What is meant by cesthetics ? What are the two theories of 
beauty? How is beauty considered in this book? 26. What is 
meant by taste ? What are its two elements ? What is said of 
their development? How may taste be cultivated? How is bad 
taste exhibited? What is the distinction between a refined and a 
catholic tdi^tel 27. To w^hat may literary beauty pertain? What 
elements are considered in this chapter? Where do w^e find 
beauty of form and of content united ? Why is vivid description 
an element of beauty ? Give an illustration. How may medita- 
tive reflection become an element of beauty? Illustrate. What 
is meant by harmony of thought and expression? Give an ex- 
ample. How may sound reenf orce the sense ? Illustrate. What 
is said about felicitous expression ? What writers excel in feli- 
city of expression? Illustrate. What is said of high spiritual 
truth ? !N"ame the three great provinces of thought. What does 
Lowell think of the evils in the wwld? What does Kuskin say 
of the phenomena of nature? What is said of noble thought 
and sentiment? What makes Patrick Henry's speech thrilling? 
How did Carlyle conceive of nature? What is said of love in 
literature? What is Browning's idea? What is the effect of 
portraying noble character? What is said of obscene realism? 
To what does Bos well's Life of Johnson " owe its principal 
charm? What does Carlyle say of Luther? What is said of 
heroic self-sacrifice? Illustrate. Where do we see the beauty 
of simple goodness portrayed ? What is the effect of the fitting 
portrayal of grandeur? What tw^o kinds of grandeur are dis- 
tinguished? Mention some objects of natural grandeur. Illus- 
trate from Byron. Give an illustration of the moral sublime. 
To what does pathos appeal? Illustrate. Bepeat the quotation 
from Hood. What tw^o species of the ludicrous are distin- 
guished? What is wit-? What is Si pun? Illustrate. What is 
satire ? What are the two kinds of satire ? Give an illustration. 
What is Si parody? Illustrate. How" does humor differ from ivit? 
Give an example of humor. 



48 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following extracts should be carefully studied 
for the purpose of determining their elements of inter- 
nal excellence or beauty. They should be tested by such 
questions as these : 

Is the extract descriptive or meditative? What gives vivid- 
ness to the description? What points are brought out in the 
meditation? What is the main thought or feeling presented? 
Does it pertain to man, natmx, or God ? What phases of nature 
are considered? What element of character is set forth? Is 
there dignity or felicity of expression ? Is grandeur portrayed ? 
Is it physical or moral ? Is there tenderness or pathos ? What 
gives it this element? Is there art or humor? What kind of 
wit? What is the chief source of beauty? 

A man from Maine, who had never paid more than twenty- 
five cents for admission to an entertainment, went to a New York 
theatre where the play was The Forty Thieves," and was 
charged a dollar and a half for a ticket. Handing the paste- 
board back, he remarked, Keep it. Mister ; I don't want to see 
the other thirty-nine." — Anon. 

OLD IRONSIDES 

O better that her shattered hulk 

Should sink beneath the wave ; 
Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 

And there should be her grave; 
Nail to the mast her holy flag, 

Set every threadbare sail. 
And give her to the god of storms, 

The lightning and the gale. — Holmes. 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling 



SOME ESTHETIC PRINCIPLES 



49 



cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under- 
stand all mysteries, and all knowledge ; and though I have all 
faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I 
am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the 
poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not 
charity, it profiteth me nothing. — Paul. 

Forth goes the woodman, leaving unconcerned 

The cheerful haunts of man, to wield the axe 

And drive the wedge in yonder forest drear. 

From morn to eve his solitary task. 

Shaggy, and lean, and shrewd, with pointed ears 

And tail cropped short, half lurcher and half cur, 

His dog attends him ! Close behind his heel 

IN'ow creeps he slow ; and now, with many a frisk 

Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow 

With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout ; 

Then shakes his powdered coat, and barks for joy. 

Heedless of all his pranks, the sturdy churl 

Moves right toward the mark ; nor stops for aught, 

But now and then with pressure of his thumb, 

To adjust the fragrant charge of a short tube. 

That fumes beneath his nose ; the trailing cloud 

Streams far behind him, scenting all the air. — Cowper. 

Oh, the grave ! the grave ! It buries every error, covers every 
defect, extinguishes every resentment. From its peaceful bosom 
spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can 
look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a 
compunctious throb that he should ever have warred with the 
poor handful of earth that lies moldering before him ? But the 
grave of those we loved, — what a place for meditation ! There 
it is we call up, in long review, the whole history of vu'tue and 
gentleness, and the thousand endearments lavished upon us, 
almost unheeded, in the daily intercourse of intimacy ; there it 
is that we dwell upon the tenderness, the solemn, awful tender- 
ness of the parting scene. — Irving. 



50 



fundame:n^tal principles 



JOAN OF ARC 

The executioner had been directed to apply his torch from 
below. He did so. The fiery smoke rose up in billowy columns. 
A Dominican monk was then standing almost at her side. 
AYrapped up in his sublime office, he saw not the danger, but 
still persisted in his prayers. Even then when the last enemy 
was racing up the fiery stairs to seize her, even at that moment 
did this noblest of girls think only for him, the one friend that 
would not forsake her, and not herself; bidding him with her 
last breath to care for his own preservation, but to leave Tier to 
God. — De Quincey. 

O, lay thy hand in mine, dear ! 

We're growing old; 
But Time hath brought no sign, dear, 

That hearts grow cold. 
'Tis long, long since our new love 

Made life divine ; 
But age enricheth true love. 

Like noble wine. — Massey. 

The noon-day sun came slanting down the rocky slopes of 
La Ricca, and its masses of entangled and tall foliage, whose 
autumnal tints were mixed with the wet verdure of a thousand 
evergreens, were penetrated with it as with rain. I cannot call it 
color, it was conflagration. Purple, and crimson, and scarlet, like 
the curtains of God's tabernacle, the rejoicing trees sank into the 
valley in showers of light, every separate leaf quivering with 
buoyant and burning life ; each, as it turned to reflect or to 
transmit the sunbeam, first a torch and then an emerald. Far 
up into the recesses of the valley, the green vistas, arched like 
the hollows of mighty v/aves of some crystalline sea, with the 
arbutus flowers dashed along their flanks for foam, and silver 
flakes of orange spray tossed into the air around them, breaking 
over the gray walls of rock into a thousand separate stars, fading 
and kindling alternately as the weak wind lifted and let them 
fall. — RusKiN. 



SOME ESTHETIC PRINCIPLES 



51 



Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man; 

He 's ben on all sides that give places or pelf. 
But consistency still wnz a part of his plan, — 

He 's been true to one party, — and thet is himself ; 
So John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he shall vote for Gineral C. 

Gineral C. he goes in fer the war : 

He don't vally principle more "n an old cud; 
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs fer, 
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' blood ? 
So John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he shall vote for Gineral C. — Lowell. 



WOMAN 

Not she with traitorous kiss her Saviour stung, 

Not she denied him with unholy tongue ; 

She, while apostles shrank, could dangers brave, 

Last at the cross and earliest at the grave. — Barrett. 



Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. 
Tears from the depths of some divine despair 
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes. 
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, 
And thinking of the days that are no more. 

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail 

That brings our friends up from the underworld, 

Sad as the last which reddens over one 

That sinks with all we love below the verge ; 

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. — Tenxysox. 

Xo nation which did not contemplate this wonderful universe 
with an awe-stricken and reverential belief that there was a great 



62 



FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES 



unknown, omnipotent, and all-wise and all-just Being, superin- i 
tending all men in it, and all interests in it — no nation ever came I 
to very much, nor did any man either, who forgot that. If a 
man did forget that, he forgot the most important part of his . 
mission in this world. — Carlyle. ^ 

GOLDSMITH 

Think of him reckless, thriftless, vain if you like — but merci- 
ful, gentle, generous, full of love and pity. He passes out of our 
life and goes to render his account beyond it. Think of the 
poor pensioners weeping at his grave ; think of the noble spirits 
that admired and deplored him ; think of the righteous pen that 
wrote his epitaph — and the wonderful and unanimous response 
of affection with which the world has paid the love he gave it. 
His humor delighting us still ; his song fresh and beautiful as 
when he first charmed w ith it ; his words in all our mouths ; his 
very weaknesses beloved and familiar — his benevolent spirit 
seems still to smile upon us ; to do gentle kindnesses ; to succor 
with sweet charity; to caress, to soothe, and forgive; to plead 
with the fortunate for the unhappy and the poor. — Thackeray. 

We watched her breathing through the night, 

Her breathing soft and low. 
As in her breast the wave of life 

Kept heaving to and fro. 

Our very hopes belied our fears. 

Our fears our hopes belied, — 
We thought her dying when she slept. 

And sleeping when she died. 

For when the morn came, dim and sad. 

And chill with early showers. 
Her quiet eyelids closed, — she had 

Another morn than ours. — Hood. 



SOME ^ESTHETIC PRIXCIPLES 



53 



Note 

In addition to the foregoing extracts, those appended to the 
previous chapters may be examined again with the special view 
of discovering their aesthetic elements. Furthermore, the stu- 
dent may be required to study complete works — such as Gold- 
smith's " Deserted Village," Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Xight," 
Tennyson's " Enoch Arden," Scott's " Ivanhoe," Dickens's David 
Copperfield," and others that will occur to the teacher — in order 
to discover the beauties of description, meditation, thought, sen- 
timent, character, and other aesthetic elements awakening pleas- 
ure and imparting excellence. The results may be presented 
either orally or in writing. 



Paet Secoxd 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 

CHAPTER IV 

WORDS, SENTENCES, PARAGRAPHS 

28. English Composite. The English language is 
composite, its words being drawn from various sources. 
The original and principal element is Anglo-Saxon, 
which prevailed in England for about five hundred 
years. By the conquest of William of Normandy, 
French was introduced into England, and was spoken 
by the ruling classes for about three hundred years. 
The amalgamation of the Anglo-Saxon and the Norman 
French — a process that was fairly completed in the 
fourteenth century — resulted in modern English. But 
numerous words came in from other sources. The 
early introduction of Roman Christianity into England, 
and the revival of learning at the close of the Middle 
Ages, introduced a large Latin element. The Celtic 
population of the British Isles contributed a few words, 
such as pibroch^ clan^ hard. A considerable Greek ele- 
ment has been introduced by theology and science, and 
English conquests and commerce have introduced words 
from almost every portion of the globe, of which pagoda^ 

55 



66 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



bazaar^ veda^ bamboo^ taboo^ and raccoon will serve as 
examples. 

The composite character of our language has made it 
very copious and very interesting. No other language 
has so many words, our largest dictionaries defining 
more than a hundred thousand. Every word has its 
history, and often a very interesting one. Raccoon^ for 
instance, takes us back to the adventures of the redoubt- 
able John Smith in Virginia. The word bishop carries 
us back to the introduction of Christianity among the 
Anglo-Saxons at the close of the sixth century, and then 
through the Latin to the primitive days of the Church, 
when an episkopos^ or overseer, presided over the newly 
founded congregations in the leading cities of Greece. 
Taboo reminds us of English explorations and conquests 
in the islands of the Pacific. Thus nearly every word 
may be traced to its source and, rightly understood, is 
freighted with tales of conquest, battle, exploration, com- 
merce, science, and invention. It carries with it its mean- 
ing and atmosphere of association, which the intelligent 
and skillful writer knows how to use to advantage. 

29. Anglo-Saxon and Latin Elements. The Anglo- 
Saxon or Teutonic element of our language embraces 
about sixty per cent of the words in common use. It 
may be regarded as the trunk, on which the other ele- | 
ments have been grafted as branches. The Latin ele- 
ment embraces about thirty per cent of an ordinary . 
vocabulary, nearly two thirds of which, or about twenty I 
per cent, comes through the French. The question has 
been raised as to which element is preferable. Should 
a writer's style be Saxonized or Latinized ? • 



WORDS, SEXTEXCES, PARAGRAPHS 



57 



No absolute rule can be laid down. The two ele- 
ments supplement each other. In general the Anglo- 
Saxon element comprises concrete terms, and the Latin 
element abstract terms. As Trench has pointed out, 
"The great features of nature, sun, moon, and stars, 
earth, water, and fire; the divisions of time; three out 
of the four seasons, spring, summer, and winter; the 
features of natural scenery, the words used in earliest 
cliildhood, the simpler emotions of the mind; all the 
prime social relations, father, mother, husband, wife, 
son, daughter, brother, sister, — these are of native 
growth and unborrowed.'' ^ 

It is thus seen that the Anglo-Saxon element is full 
of force in its presentation of definite concrete objects ; 
and it is a noteworthy fact that our best writers use a 
large proportion of native words. In ordinary discourse 
none of our best writers, perhaps, fall below seventy 
per cent of Anglo-Saxon. But in philosophy, w^hich 
deals largely with abstract ideas, the Anglo-Saxon ele^ 
ment, as in passages from Herbert Spencer, may fall as 
low as sixty per cent. It is interesting to estimate the 
percentage of Anglo-Saxon or Latin in an author. This 
may easily be done by counting the number of words in 
a given passage for the denominator, and the number of 
Anglo-Saxon or Latin words for the numerator of a com- 
mon fraction, which may then be reduced to a decimal. 

30. What Element to Choose. A writer's style should 
be determined by higher considerations than the delib- 
erate purpose to use as far as possible any single ele- 
ment of our language. Such a purpose degenerates into 
1 Trench's " Study of W^ords," 155. 



58 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



affectation, and becomes a mannerism. The following 
extract from a sonnet by Addison Alexander shows what 
may be done by short Anglo-Saxon words ; but, because 
of its lack of musical rhythm and fine poetic quality, it 
is not to be commended as a model : 

Think not that strength lies in the big round word, 

Or that the brief and plain must needs be weak. 
To whom can this be true who once has heard 

The cry for help, the tongue that all men speak 
When want, or woe, or fear, is in the throat. 

So that each word gasped out is like a shriek 
Pressed from the sore heart, or a strange wild note 

Sung by some fay or fiend." 

With this may be compared the following lines from 
a sonnet by Longfellow, in which the musical effect of 
the Latin element will be clearly recognized : 

" I saw the long line of the vacant shore, 

And the sea-weed and the shells upon the sand. 
And the brown rocks left bare on every hand. 

As if the ebbing tide would flow no more. 

Then heard I, more distinctly than before. 

The ocean breathe and its great breast expand^ 
And hurrying came on the defenceless land 

The insurgent waters with tumultuous roar." 

The use of Latin words often gives clearness and 
melody to style; and instead of a violent effort to 
Saxonize his writing, an author should clothe his 
thoughts in the diction that is most fitting and 
expressive. 

31. Diction. Aristotle truly said that ''the begin- 
ning of style is correctness of diction." By diction is 



WORDS, SENTENCES, PARAGRAPHS 59 



meant the choice and use of words. Good diction lies 
at the basis of good writing. Words are used to express 
ideas ; and in view of this fundamental principle, it fol- 
lows that they should be intelligible and correct. They 
should belong to our language ; and hence the use of 
foreign words and phrases, except to supply a real want 
in English, is generally in bad taste. The use of pro- 
vincial expressions, such as tote for earry^ is to be 
avoided, except in the portrayal of provincial character. 
Archaic words, as well as those that have not yet estab- 
lished themselves, should not be employed. For these 
two classes of words Pope has laid down an excellent 
rule in his Essay on Criticism " : 

" In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold, 
Alike fantastic, if too new or old ; 
Be not the first by whom the new are tried. 
Nor yet the last to lay the old aside." 

There is sometimes an obvious effort among young or 
half-cultured writers to seek after unusual words. 

Unless the purpose of discourse is to be defeated, it 
is evident that the words used by a writer should have 
their accepted and exact meaning. The study of ety- 
mology, though sometimes misleading, is very helpful in 
learning the exact force of words. There are very few 
words in our language that are exactly synonymous ; and 
' while synonyms are often loosely used, the skillful writer 
i is careful to distinguish their different shades of mean- 
I ing. This nice use of words, impossible to the unculti- 
vated mind, adds an exquisite charm to writing. 

A very common fault of diction results in what is 
called fine writing." This fault consists in the choice 



60 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



of high-sounding words to express commonplace ideas. 
It is the besetting vice of half-educated writers. In 
the hands of such persons a ''fair lady" becomes a 
"female possessing considerable personal attractions," 
and " drinking liquor " turns into " ingurgitating spirit- 
uous stimulus." Except for purposes of wit or humor, 
this affectation is not to be tolerated. 

32. Sentences. In reading various authors, it is 
readily observed that they use different kinds of sen- 
tences. Some writers use short sentences, others long 
and complicated sentences. In comparing recent authors 
with those of two or three centuries ago, it will gener- 
ally be found that shorter sentences are now more 
frequent. This brevity and simplicity of predication 
has resulted in greater clearness. But the constant 
use of short, simple sentences produces a disagreeable 
monotony. 

Sentences are rhetorically distinguished as loose^ peri- 
odic^ and balanced, A loose sentence is one in which 
the meaning is complete at one or more points before 
the end. Thus, at the beginning of " Pilgrim's Prog- 
ress," we read : " As I walked through the wilderness 
of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a 
den, and laid me down in that place to sleep ; and as 
I slept, I dreamed a dream." 

A periodic sentence holds the meaning in suspense 
till the close. For example, Macaulay writes : " If any 
man could have succeeded in this attempt, a man of 
talents so rare, of judgments so prematurely ripe, of 
temper so calm, and of manners so plausible, might 
have been expected to succeed." 



WOKDS, SEXTEXCES, PARAGRAPHS 



61 



A balanced sentence consists of two parts, the one 
corresponding to the other. In Johnson's famous par- 
allel we read : " The style of Dryden is capricious and 
varied, that of Pope is cautious and uniform; Dryden 
obeys the motions of his own mind, Pope constrains his 
mind to his own rules of composition. Dryden is some- 
times vehement and rapid ; Pope is always smooth, 
uniform, and gentle." 

A good style is apt to make use of all three kinds of 
sentences, which give an agreeable diversity to compo- 
sition. The exclusive use of any one form produces 
monotony. In studying a writer's style, it is impor- 
tant to determine the prevailing type, as well as the 
average length, of his sentences. This investigation 
will give us some insight into a source of his weakness 
or power, and furnish a basis of interesting comparison 
with others. 

Every sentence should have clearness, unity ^ harmony, 
and strength. Of these four qualities, clearness is the 
most important ; for without it the purpose of discourse 
is defeated. Apart from the right choice and position 
> of words, clearness is secured by U7iity of thought. 
: This requires that the main subject retain a dominant 
' place throughout the sentence. The writer should not 
allow himself to be switched off from the main proposi- 
. tion. Harmony is attained by the choice of euphonious 
I words, and by their arrangement in an agreeable or 
:j rhythmical order. Strength is secured, in large measure, 
i by the omission of unnecessary words. The error of 
repeating the same thought in different words is called 
'tautology^ while the use of more words than are necessary 



62 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



is known as pleonasm or redundancy. The fault of 
redundancy is most likely to be found in the use of 
adjectives ; and a chaste or classic style appears particu- 
larly in a severe self-restraint in the use of qualifying 
expressions. 

33. Paragraph. A paragraph consists of a group of 
sentences related in thought. It contains the discus- 
sion of a single phase of the subject. The nature of 
the paragraph determines its laws. The paragraph, like 
each sentence, should be characterized by unity. The 
opening sentence should contain the subject, or phase of 
the subject, to be discussed. The succeeding treatment 
should be cumulative in character, so that the reader 
is led on by a sense of the unfolding of the point under 
consideration. 

There are various ways of expanding or building up 
the paragraph. It may be expanded by a process of 
definition. Frequently one specification after another 
is given till all sides of the subject have been presented. 
Sometimes a general statement is followed by concrete 
and individual instances. Again, the development of 
the paragraph takes the form of proof or illustra- 
tion. But whatever may be the form of development, j 
it should grow in importance till the conclusion. \ 

The importance of paragraphing is often lost sight of 
by even experienced writers. Sometimes there is an 
absence of clear, definite thought. Hence it happens 
that we frequently find whole pages without any break 
to indicate the transitions of thought. Such writing is | 
apt to leave a confused or obscure impression. 



WOKDS, SEXTEXCES, PARAGRAPHS 



63 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

28. Why is the English language called composite ? Which is 
the principal element? How was French introduced? What 
was the origin of our present English ? Whence came the Latin 
element ? Xame some other elements and their sources. What 
is said of the copiousness of our language ? of the history of 
words? Giye illustrations. 29. What per cent in daily use is 
Anglo-Saxon? What per cent is Latin? What proportion of 
the Latin element comes through the French? Which element 
is preferable ? What classes of words are Anglo-Saxon ? What 
per cent of Anglo-Saxon words is used by our best writers? 
How do you estimate the percentage ? " 30. How is the purpose to 
use a single element of our language characterized? Contrast 
the sonnets of Alexander and Longfellow. What shotild deter- 
mine the writer's choice of words? 31. What did Aristotle say 
of diction ? What is meant by diction ? What qualities should 
diction haye ? What is said of the use of foreign words and 
phrases? What is a provincialism ? De^ne arc7iais??i and neologism. 
What is Pope's rule in regard to them ? What is said of the study 
of etymology ? of synonyms ? of the nice use of words ? What is 
meant by fine writing? Giye an illustration. 32. What is the 
difference in the sentences of recent and older writers ? What is 
the gain in short predication ? What is the rhetorical classifica- 
tion of sentences? Define loose, periodic, and balanced sentences. 
Illustrate. What is said of a good style ? What four character- 
istics should a sentence haye ? Which is the most important ? 
Why? What is meant by unity ? How is JiarrnonT/ attained ? How 
is strength or energy secured ? Explain tautology and redundancy. 
By what is a classic style characterized? 33. What is a para- 
graph ? What should be its chief characteristic ? What should 
the opening sentence do ? How is the paragraph* expanded or 
developed? What is the effect of bad paragraphing ? 



64 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following extracts should be tested by such 
questions as these : 

What percentage of the words is Anglo-Saxon? What per- 
centage is Latin? From what sources are there other words? 
Is the diction pure, appropriate, and precise ? Are there pro- 
vincialisms, archaisms, neologisms ? Are synonyms carefully dis- 
criminated ? Is the diction high-flown ? What proportion of 
sentences are simple ? complex ? compound ? What proportion 
are loose? periodic? halancedf What is the average number 
of words? Are the sentences clear? Do they show unity of 
structure? Are they harmonious? Are they forcible? Can 
any words be omitted without loss? Is there tautology or 
redundancy? Are the paragraphs well built up? By what 
means are they developed? 

Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and 
saw every day the flowers appear in the earth, and heard the 
voice of the turtle in the land. In this country the sun shineth 
night and day ; wherefore this was beyond the valley of the 
Shadow of Death, and also out of the reach of Giant Despair; 
neither could they from this place so much as see Doubting- 
Castle. Here they were within sight of the City they were going 
to : also here met them some of the inhabitants thereof ; for in 
this land the shining ones commonly walked, because it was 
upon the borders of heaven. — Bunyan. 

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that 
he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made 
with hands ; neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though 
he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and 
all things ; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for 
to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the 
times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ; that 
they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, 



WORDS, SEXTEXCES, PARAGRAPHS 



65 



and find him, though he be not far from every one of ns ; for in 
him ^'e live, and move, and liave our being; as certain also of 
your o^vn poets have said, for v^'e are also his offspring. — Paul. 

Criticism, either didactic or defensive, occupies almost all his 
prose, except those pages ^ hich he has devoted to his patrons ; 
but none of his 23refaces were ever thought tedious. They have 
not the formality of a settled style, in vrliich the first half of 
the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, 
nor the periods modeled ; every word seems to drop by chance, 
though it falls into its proper place. Xothing is cold or languid; 
the whole is airy, animated, and vigorous; what is little, is gay; 
and what is great, is splendid. He may be thought to mention 
himself too frequently ; but while he forces himself upon our 
esteem, we cannot refuse him to stand high in his own. Every- 
thing is excused by the play of images and the spriteliness of 
expression. Though all is easy, nothing is feeble; though all 
seems careless, there is nothing harsh ; and thotigh. since his 
earlier works, more than a century has passed, they have nothing 
yet uncouth or obsolete. — Samuel Johns ox. 

The only accession which the Roman empire received, dtiring 
the first century of the Christian era. was the province of Britain. 
In this single instance, the successors of Caesar and Augusttis 

i were persuaded to follow the example of the former, rather than 
the precept of the latter. The proximity of its situation to the 
coast of Gaul seemed to invite their arms ; the pleasing though 
doubtful intelligence of a pearl fishery attracted their avarice ; 
and as Britain was viewed in the light of a distinct and instilated 
world, the conquest scarcely formed any exception to the general 

i system of continental measures. After a war of about forty 
years, undertaken by the most stupid, maintained by the most 

i dissoltite, and terminated by the most timid of all the emperors, 
the far greater j^art of the island submitted to the Roman yoke. 

GiBBOX. 

A mob is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves 
of reason, and traversing its work. The mob is man voluntarily 



66 



KHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity 
is night. Its actions are insane, like its whole constitution. It 
persecutes a principle ; it would whip a right ; it would tar and 
feather justice by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and 
persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys 
who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming 
to the stars. The inviolate spirit turns that spite against the 
wrong-doers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash 
inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every prison a more illustrious 
abode ; every burned book or house enlightens the world ; every 
suppressed or expunged word reverberates through the earth 
from side to side. Hom-s of sanity and consideration are always 
arriving to communities, as to individuals, when the truth is 
seen, and the martyrs are justified. — Emerson. 

I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment, in the 
Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books 
demean themselves, as well as men ; and thereafter to confine, 
imprison, and do sharpest justice on them as malefactors. For 
books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency 
of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny 
they are ; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy 
and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know 
they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous 
dragon's teeth ; and, being sown up and down, may chance to 
spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wari- 
ness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book : 
who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image ; but he 
who destroys a good book kills reason itself, kills the image of 
God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the 
earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master- 
spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond 
life. — Milton. 

Thus the Puritan was made up of two different men, the one 
all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion, the other proud, 
calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust 



WORDS, SEXTEXCES, PARAGEAPHS 67 



before his Maker : but he set his foot on the neck of his king. 
In his devotional retirementj he prayed with convulsions, and 
groans, and tears. He was half-maddened by glorious or terrible 
illusions. He heard the lyres of angels or the tempting whispers 
of fiends. He caught a gleam of the Beatific Vision, or woke 
screaming from dreams of everlasting fire. But when he took 
his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tem- 
pestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind 
them. People who saw nothing of the godly but their uncouth 
visages, and who heard nothing from them but their groans and 
their whining hymns, might laugh at them. But those had 
little reason to laugh who encountered them in the hall of debate 
or in the field of battle. — Macaulay. 

More manifest still are the physiological benefits of emotional 
pleasures. Every power, bodily and mental, is increased by 
good spirits," which is our name for a general emotional satis- 
faction. The truth that the fundamental vital actions ^ — those 
of nutrition — are furthered by laughter-moving conversation, 
or rather by the pleasurable feeling causing laughter, is one of 
old standing : and every dyspeptic knows that in exhilarating 
company, a large and varied dinner, including not very digestible 
things, may be eaten with impunity, and, indeed, with benefit, 
while a small, carefully chosen dinner of simple things, eaten in 
solitude, will be followed by indigestion. — Herbert Spexcer. 

XOTE 

In addition to the foregoing extracts, some of those previously 
given, in poetry as well as prose, may be studied in the same 
way. Furthermore, the student may be required to examine 
more at length a few authors designated by the teacher, in order 
to determine (1) the proportion of simple, complex, and compound 
sentences ; (2) the proportion of loose, periodic, and balanced 
sentences ; (3) the percentage of Anglo-Saxon or Latin words ; 
and (4) the average number of words in a sentence. The results 
wiU give occasion for interesting and instructive comparisons. 



CHAPTER V 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 

34. Definition. A figure of speech is a deviation from 
the plain and ordinary mode of speaking. Its object is 
greater effect. Figures originated, perhaps, in a limi- 
tation of vocabulary; and many words that are now 
regarded as plain were at first figurative. But the use 
of figures is natural, and at present they are used to 
embellish discourse and to give it greater vividness and 
force. To say with Thomson, for example, — 

^' But yonder comes the powerful King of day, 
Rejoicing in the east," — 

is far more vivid and forceful than to say " the sun is 
rising." Nearly all great writers, especially poets, enrich 
their style by the use of figures. 

35. Kinds of Figures. There are various kinds of 
figures, which may be reduced, however, to three classes 
or groups. The figures based upon resemblance are 
simile^ metaphor^ personification^ and allegory. Those 
founded on contiguity are metonymy^ synecdoche^ excla- 
mation, hyperbole^ apostrophe, and vision. Those resting 
upon contrast are antithesis, climax, epigram, and irony. 
Other forms of classification have been proposed. There 
are figures of diction and figures of thought ; the former 
are found in the choice of words, the latter in the form 

68 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



69 



of the sentence. To figures of diction has been given 
the name of figures of intuition^ because they present a 
sensible image to the mind ; to figures of thought has 
been given the name figures of emphasis, because they 
emphasize the thought. We thus get the following 
division : 

Figures of Intuition Figures of Emphasis 

Simile Interrogation 
Metaphor Exclamation 
Personification Climax 
Allegory Antithesis 
Metonymy Epigram 
Synecdoche Irony 
Apostrophe H^^erbole 
Vision 

36. Figures of Resemblance. (1) Simile is a form of 
comparison in which one thing is likened to another. 
It is usually introduced by like or as, or some other word 
of comparison; as, — 

" The twilight hours like lirds flew by, 
As lightly and as free." 

It is obvious that the things compared in simile should 
have some sort of resemblance. When the points of 
resemblance are too remote the simile is said to be far- 
fetched. This was a frequent mistake among the so- 
called "• metaphysical poets " of the seventeenth century. 
Except in burlesque or mock-heroic style, dignified sub- 
jects should not be likened to what is trifling or low. 
The effect of such a simile is ridiculous, as in the well- 
known lines from Butler s Hudibras " : 

" And, like a lobster boiled, the morn 
From black to red beo'an to turn." 



70 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



(2) Metaphor is an abridged simile, the words express- 
ing likeness being omitted. In the sentence, Rod- 
erick Dhu fought like a lion," we have a simile ; but 
when we say, " He was a lion in the fight," we have a 
metaphor. The metaphor is briefer and more striking 
than the simile ; it springs from greater emotion or 
mental energy, and often imparts great force or beauty 
to a passage. Thus, likening human life to a voyage 
at sea, Shakespeare says : 

There is a tide in the affairs of men, 
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune ; 
Omitted, all the voyage of their life 
Is bound in shallows and in miseries." 

There are several errors that are not infrequent in the 
use of metaphor. A metaphor should not be blended 
with plain language in the same sentence, nor should it 
be extended too far. The latter fault is called " strain- 
ing the metaphor." Two incongruous metaphors should 
not be used in the same sentence. In the following 
lines from Addison his muse is first conceived of as a 
steed that needs to be restrained with a bridle, and then 
as a ship that is eager to be launched : 

"I bridle in my struggling Muse with pain, 
That longs to launch into a bolder strain." 

(3) Personification is the attribution of life to inani- 
mate things. When we speak of " the thirsty ground " 
or "the angry ocean," we endow these objects with the 
feelings of living creatures. Personification is a bold 
species of metaphor ; it is the offspring of vivid feeling 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



71 



or conception, and often lifts discourse to a high plane. 
Thus, in Romeo and Juliet," we read, — 

" Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day- 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops"; 

and in Shelley's " Queen Mab," — 

" How wonderful is Death, 

Death and his brother Sleep ! 
One, pale as yonder waning moon, 

With lips of lurid blue ; 

The other, rosy as the morn 
When, throned on ocean's wave, 

It blushes o'er the world : 
Yet both so passing wonderful ! " 

(4) Allegory is the description of one object in terms 
of another. It is a sort of continued metaphor in which, 
however, the main subject of discourse is not mentioned. 
In the following beautiful allegory, the Jewish people 
are described in the character of a vine : " Thou hast 
I brought a vine out of Egypt ; thou hast cast out the 
heathen, and planted it. Thou preparedst room before 
it, and didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the 
I land. The hills were covered with the shadow of it, 
jand the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. 
^ She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches 
' unto the river. Why hast thou then broken down her 
(hedges, so that all they which pass by the way do pluck 
jher? The boar out of the wood doth waste it, and 
•the wild beast of the field doth devour it. Return, we 
beseech thee, O God of hosts ; look down from heaven, 
land behold, and visit this vine ; and the vineyard which 



72 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou 
madest strong for thyself." ^ 

The f arable and the fahle are closely akin to alle- 
gory. A parable is a brief narrative of real or imaginary 
incidents for the purpose of inculcating some moral or 
religious truth. It has been described as an earthly 
story with a heavenly meaning." A considerable part of 
Christ's teaching was in parables, many of which are as 
beautiful as they are profound. 

A fable is a fictitious story introducing animals or even 
inanimate things as rational speakers and actors, for the 
purpose of teaching or enforcing a moral. The fables 
of ^sop are almost universally known, and the fables of 
La Fontaine exhibit a high degree of artistic merit. 

37. Figures of Contiguity. (1) Metonymy consists in 
naming an object by one of its attributes or accompani- 
ments. It is based, not on resemblance, but on relation, 
such as cau^e and effect^ container and thing contained^ 
material and thing made of it^ etc. When we say, for 
example, that gray hairs are venerable," we mean old 
age^ putting an effect for the cause. In the sentence, 
Socrates drank the fatal eup^'' the container is put for 
the thing contained, namely, the deadly hemlock. 

The general effect of metonymy is to bring before the 
mind a definite image, and thus to impart a graphic 
quality to the style. To say, " The pen is mightier 
than the sword," is more graphic and forcible than to 
say, Literature is mightier than war." 

(2) Synecdoche puts a part for the whole, or a whole 
for the part ; as, The harbor was crowded with masts^ 

1 Psalm Ixxx. 8-15. * 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



73 



Synecdoche is a species of metonymy, and has the same 
effect of giving vividness. This is apparent in a well- 
known quatrain from Goethe : 

" Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, 

Who ne'er the mournful midniglit hours 
Weeping upon his bed has sate, 

He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers." 

(3) Exclamation is a figure of thought. It is the 
result of kindled emotion, and expresses in exclamatory 
form what would usually be stated in declarative form. 
Thus Hamlet, outraged at the conduct of his mother, 
bursts forth : 

" O that this too too solid flesh would melt, 
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew I 
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed 
His canon 'gainst self-slaughter I O God ! God ! 
How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, 
Seem to me all the uses of this wwld I " 

Though chiefly confined to poetr}^ exclamation is fre- 
quent in fervid prose, and Carlyle's works fairly bristle 
with exclamation points. 

(4) Apostrophe is a direct address to the absent as 
present, the inanimate as living, or the abstract as pei- 
sonal. It is closely allied to personification, with which 

'it is often associated. This figure is expressive of intense 
emotion. The following passage from "King Lear" 
'twill serve for illustration : 

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks I rage ! blow^ ! 
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout 
Til] you have drench'd our steeples, drown'd the cocks ! 
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires, 



74 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts, 

Singe my white head ! And thou, all-shaking thunder, 

Smite flat the thick rotundity o' the world ! ^ 

1 

(5) Vision is a description of absent things as present. , 
It is suited only to animated discourse in either prose , 
or poetry. In the midst of the argument of Milton's . 
"Areopagitica " we find this splendid outburst portray- j 
ing the future of England : Methinks I see in my , 
mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a . 
strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks ; , 
methinks I see her, as an eagle, mewing her mighty . 
youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full mid- 
day beam ; purging and scaling her long abused sight |i 
at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance ; while the ^ 
whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those ^ 
also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what . 
she means, and in their envious gabble would prognos- 
ticate a year of sects and schisms." 

(6) Hyperbole is an exaggerated form of statement. 
and is used to magnify or diminish an object. It is quite r 
natural, under the impulse of strong emotion or imagi- ^ 
nation, to use exaggerated statements, and frequently it j 
serves to lend piquancy and force to style. But this tend- ^ 
ency is dangerous, and should be kept under restraint. , 
As a rule it is best to see and describe things as they 
are. The following from Julius Caesar " will serve as ; 
an example of hyperbole : 

"Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world - 
Like a Colossus, and we petty men 
Walk under his huge legs and peep about 
To find ourselves dishonorable graves." 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



76 



38. Figures of Contrast. (1) Antithesis presents a 
strong contrast of words or sentiments, usually in the 
form of balanced sentences. It gives force to style by 
uniting opposite things in one conception. Its exces- 
sive use, however, becomes monotonous ; and antithesis 
in construction, without a real contrast of thought, is 
confusing and disagreeable. Macaulay, perhaps, makes 
more frequent use of antithesis than any other of our 
great modern writers. Of the Puritans he says: "If they 
were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and 
poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God ; if 
their names were not found in the registers of heralds, 
they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book 
of Life ; if their steps were not accompanied by a splen- 
did train of menials, legions of ministering angels had 
charge over them." 

(2) Climax arranges its words, phrases, or clauses in 
an order of increasing impressiveness. Its proper use 
gives an accumulative force to the sentence. No better 
illustration of the climax can be given than the well- 
known one in Cicero's oration against Verres : " To 
bind a Roman citizen is an outrage ; to scourge him is 
an atrocious crime ; to put him to death is almost parri- 
cide ; but to crucify him — what shall I call it ? " 

The arrangement of the words or clauses in a descend- 
ing order is called anticlimax or bathos. It is frequently 
I used in wit and humor. The following sentence is a 
I ridiculous anticlimax: "The enemy is now hovering 
'upon our borders, preparing to press the knife to our 
throats, to devastate our fields, to quarter themselves in 
our houses, and to devour our poultry." 



76 



RHETOKICAL ELEMENTS 



The principle of the climax is of wide application. 
Not only in the sentence but also in the paragraph, 
chapter, and entire work, there should be, as far as 
possible, progress in the importance, intensity, or ampli- 
tude of the thought. 

(3) Interrogation strengthens an affirmation or denial 
by throwing it into the form of a question. It is a fig- 
ure frequent in poetry and emotional prose. The fol- 
lowing example from Gray's " Elegy " will be sufficient 
for illustration : 

" Can storied urn or animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? 
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust, 

Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death ? 

These questions are not asked for information, but 
for rhetorical effect, and they forcibly suggest the truth 
of their negation. 

(4) Epigram is the pungent phrasing of a shrewd 
observation. It may be recognized by two character- 
istics, — it must be brief, and it must have an unex- 
pected turn of thought. This turn of thought may 
spring from an apparent contradiction, from the solemn 
assertion of a truism, from a play on words, or from 
other sources. There is an apparent contradiction in 
Wordsworth's epigrammatic line, — 

The child is father of the man." 

There is a play on words in the following epigram- 
matic characterization of a loud and violent speaker: 
" He mistakes perspiration for inspiration.^'^ 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



77 



(5) Irony expresses a thought contrary to the form 
of words. Its seeming praise is really condemnation ; 
its compliments are insults. Its advantage lies in the 
difficulty its victim experiences in making a reply. It 
is useful in chastising follies and vices ; but as a rule 
ironic touches are to be preferred to continuous irony. 
The following is from Thackeray: ''So was Helen of 
Greece innocent. She never ran away with Paris, 
the dangerous young Trojan. Menelaus, her husband, 
ill-used her ; and there never was any siege of Troy 
at all. So was Bluebeard's wife innocent. She never 
peeped into the closet where the other wives were with 
their heads off. She never dropped the key, or stained 
it with blood ; and her brothers were quite right in fin- 
ishing Bluebeard, the cowardly brute ! Yes, ]\Iadam 
Laffarge never poisoned her husband, and Mary of 
Scotland never blew up hers ; and Eve never took the 
apple — it was a cowardly fabrication of the serpent's." 



78 



EHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



i 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

34. What is a figure ? How did it originate ? \Yhat is its 
object? In what two ways is it used? Illustrate. 35. To how 
many classes may figures be reduced ? On what are these several 
groups based ? ^^ame the figures based on resemblance ; those 
based on contiguity ; on contrast. What name is given to figures 
of diction f to figures of thought f State the figures of intuition ; of 
emphasis. 36. What is a simile f How is it introduced ? Give an 
illustration. What errors should be avoided in the use of simile ? 
What is a metaphor ? What is its effect as compared with a simile ? 
What errors in the use of metaphor are to be avoided ? What is 
a mixed metaphor ? Illustrate. What is personification ? Give an 
example. Vshditis allegory f Illustrate. What is ajoara^/e .2* Give 
an example. What is a fahle f 

37. What is metonymy f On what is it based ? Illustrate. What 
is its effect on style ? What is synecdoche f Illustrate. What is 
exclamation f Illustrate. What is apostrophe f To what is it closely 
related? Illustrate. What is m^zon Illustrate. 'Whdii \^ hyperbole? 
Give an example. What is said of the use of hyperbole ? 

38. What is antithesis ? What is said of its use ? Give an 
example. What is climax'^ Give an illustration. What is 
bathos f Illustrate. What is interrogation ? Illustrate. What 
is epigram? How recognized? Illustrate. What is irony? 
What is said of its use ? Illustrate. 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



79 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following passages should be studied in the light 
of such questions as these : 

What figure or figures does the piece contain ? Is it a figure of 
resemblance, contiguity, or contrast ? Is it a figure of diction or 
of thought ? AVhat is its effect ? Does it give force or beauty 
to the sentence ? How would the thought be expressed in plain 
language ? Is it used consistently ? In what way does it strengthen 
or weaken the sentence ? Is the figure trite or original ? Is it 
farfetched or natural? What percentage of sentences is figura- 
tive? Are figures more common in prose or poetry? Why? Do 
the minor or the major poets use more figures ? 

What stronger breast-plate than a heart untainted? 
Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just ; 
And he but naked though locked up in steel 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted. 

Shakespeare. 

Hast thou left thy blue course in heaven, golden-haired son of 
the sky? The west hath opened its gates ; the bed of thy repose 
is there. The waves gather to behold thy beauty ; they lift their 
'trembling heads ; they see thee lovely in thy sleep : but they 
shrink away with fear. Rest in thy shadowy cave, 0 Sim i and 
let thy return be in joy. — Macpherson. 

I see before me the Gladiator lie ; 
He leans upon his hand ; his manly brow 
Consents to death, but conquers agony. 
And his drooped head sinks gradually low ; 
And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow 
From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one. 
Like the first of a thunder-shower ; and now 
The arena swims around him ; he is gone. 
Ere ceased the inhuman shout which hailed the wretch 
who won. — Byron. 



80 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



If a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to 
think little of robbing ; and from robbing he comes next to 
drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and 
procrastination. — De Quincey. 

Assemble all the poor men of your sort ; 

Draw them to Tiber banks and weep your tears 

Into the channel, till the lowest stream 

Do kiss the most exalted shores of all. — Shakespeare. 

No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with 
you. — Job. 

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, 
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold; 
And the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea. 
When the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee. — Byron. 

The best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him was a sufferer, 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed. — Dekker. 

The glories of our birth and state 

Are shadows, not substantial things ; 
There is no armor against fate ; 
Death lays his icy hand on kings. 
Scepter and crown 
Must tumble down, 
And in the dust be equal made 

With the poor crooked scythe and spade. — Shirley. 

What a piece of work is man ! how noble in reason ! how 
infinite in faculty ! in form and moving how express and admi- 
rable ! in action how like an angel ! in apprehension how like a 
god ! the beauty of this world ! the paragon of animals ! And 
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? man delights not 
me ; no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling you seem to 
say so. — Shakespeare. 



FIGURES OF SPEECH 



81 



Great lords, wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss, 
But cheerly seek how to redress their harms. 
What though the mast be now thrown overboard. 
The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, 
And half our sailors swallowed in the flood ? 
Yet lives our pilot still. Is 't meet that he 
Should leave the helm, and, like a fearful lad. 
With tearful eyes, add water to the sea. 
And give more strength to that which hath too much. 
While in his moan the ship splits on the rock, 
Which industry and courage might have saved? 
Ah, what a shame ! ah, what a fault were this ! 

Shakespeare. 

The unwonted lines which momentary passion had ruled in 
Mr. Pickwick's clear and open brow gradually melted away, as 
his young friend spoke, like the marks of a black lead pencil 
beneath the softening influence of India rubber. — Dickens. 

When thus, as I may say, before the use of the loadstone, or 
knowledge of the compass, I was sailing in a vast ocean, without 
other help than the pole-star of the ancients, and the rules of the 
French stage among the moderns. — Dryden. 

Once as I told in glee 
Tales of the stormy sea. 
Soft eyes did gaze on me, 

Burning but tender ; 
' And as the white stars shine 

On the dark Xorway pine. 
On that dark heart of mine 

Fell their soft splendor. — Longfellow. 

j Since the vessel of thy unbounded ambition hath been wrecked 
j in the gulf of thy self-love, it would be proper that thou shouldst 
! take in the sails of thy temerity, and cast the anchor of repent- 

Iance in the port of sincerity and justice, which is the port of 
safety ; lest the tempest of our vengeance make thee perish in 
the sea of the punishment thou deservest. — Axon. 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



She never told her love, 
But let concealment, like a worm in the bud, 
Feed on her damask cheek ; she pined in thought ; 
And, with a green and yellow melancholy, 
She sat like Patience on a monument, 
Smiling at grief. — Shakespeare. 

England ne'er had a king until his time ; 

Virtue he had, deserving to command ; 

His brandished sword did blind men with its beams ; 

His arms spread wider than a dragon's wings ; 

His sparkling eyes, replete with awful fire. 

More dazzled, and drove back his enemies. 

Than midday sun fierce beat against their faces. 

What should I say ? his deeds exceed all speech ; 

He never lifted up his hand, but conquered. 

Shakespeare. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 

As the best gem upon her zone. 

And Morning opes with haste her lids 

To gaze upon the Pyramids ; 

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, 

As on its friends, with kindred eye ; 

For out of Thought's interior sphere 

Those wonders rose to upper air ; 

And Nature gladly gave them place. 

Adopted them into her race. 

And granted them an equal date 

With Andes and with Ararat. — Emerson. 



FIGUKES OF SPEECH 



83 



XOTE 

In addition to the extracts here given, the student might ex- 
amine those connected with previous chapters, and discover the 
various figures they contain. Furthermore, it is recommended that 
he study the figures in a whole piece ; as Milton's L'AllegTO " or 
"II Penseroso," Goldsmith's "Deserted Village," Gray's "Elegy," 
Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Xight," Wordsworth's " Ode on Inti- 
mations of Immortality," Coleridge's " Ancient Mariner." Moore's 
"Paradise and the Peri," Shelley's "Adonais," Tennyson's Passing 
of Arthur," Longfellow's " Building of the Ship," Lowell's Vision 
of Sir Launfal," and many others that will occur to the teacher. 
Let him determine the percentage of figurative sentences, and 
compare the results with those obtained from an examination of 
the prose of Macaulay, Ruskin, Carlyle, De Quincey, Lowell, and 
other standard writers. This comparison will throw light on the 
essential difference between poetry and prose. 



CHAPTER VI 
STYLE 

39. Definition. Style means an author's mode of 
expression. It is not, as is sometimes supposed, an 
artificial trick, but a genuine expression of the mind 
and character. Buffon had the right idea when he said, 

The style is the man." It derives its leading char- 
acteristics from the intellect, culture, and character of 
the writer. A man of independent force and integrity 
gives natural expression to his personality. His style | 
reveals his mental and moral qualities. Only weaklings, 
who are afraid to be natural and who are destitute of 
substantial worth, become conscious imitators or affect 
artificial peculiarities. 

We have already considered style as related to dic- 
tion^ different kinds of sentences^ and figures of speech. 
It remains to consider it, first, in relation to the various 
kinds of discourse, and, secondly, to the generic types a 
of mind. ^ 

40. Kinds of Discourse. There are four generic kinds 

of discourse, namely, description^ narration^ exposition^ , 
and argument. Though frequently united in the same 
work, or even in the same paragraph, they are yet 
clearly distinguishable. Each has a well-defined pur- \ 
pose and method, to which the mode of expression is 
naturally bent or adapted. The result is what may be ^ 

84 ^ 



ii 



STYLE 



85 



called a descriptive, narrative, expository, or argumen- 
tative style. These different kinds of discourse will 
now be considered and illustrated in greater detail. 

(1) Description is the portrayal of an object by 
means of language. The object described may belong 
either to the material or the spiritual world. It may 
be a single flower, a landscape, or a stellar system. 
The purpose of description is to enable the reader to 
reproduce the scene, object, or experience in his own 
imagination. In general there are two kinds of descrip- 
tion, — the objective and the subjective ; but the laws 
of both are the same. There must be a judicious selec- 
tion and grouping of the details, and their number must 
be so restricted as not to produce confusion. 

Objective description portrays objects as they exist 
in the external world. It points out in succession their 
distinguishing features. Thus we read in Wordsworth's 
"A Night Piece,"— 

" The traveller looks up — the clouds are split 
Asunder — and above his head he sees 
The clear moon, and the glory of the heavens. 
There, in a black-blue vault she sails along. 
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small 
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss 
Drive as she drives ; how fast they wheel away, 
Yet vanish not ! — the wind is in the tree. 
But they are silent ; — still they roll along 
Immeasurably distant ; and the vault 
Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds." 

Subjective description notes the effects produced by 
an external object or scene on the mind and heart. 
The eye of the writer is turned inward rather than 



86 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



outward; he brings before us the thoughts, feelings, 
fancies that are started within his soul. Thus Browning 
speaks of music in his early poem, " Pauline " : 

" For music (which is earnest of a heaven, 
Seeing we know emotions strange by it, 
Not else to be revealed) is as a voice, 
A low voice calling fancy, as a friend, 
To the green w oods in the gay summer time ; 
And she fills all the way with dancing shapes 
Which have made painters pale, and they go on. 
While stars look at them and wdnds call to them. 
As they leave life's path for the twilight world 
Where the dead gather." 

(2) Narration is a recital of incidents or events in 
an orderly sequence. It is closely related to descrip- 
tion, with which it is frequently joined in the same 
paragraph. The one is used to aid or supplement the 
other. Like description, narration has its place in 
nearly every form of composition ; and in history, fic- 
tion, and epic poetry it constitutes, perhaps, the body 
of discourse. The incidents narrated should be selected 
according to their interest and importance ; they should 
usually be presented in their chronological order, and 
there should be a perceptible and often a rapid move- 
ment toward a definite end. In all artistic narration 
we find unity, proportion, and completeness. The fol- 
lowing extract from Addison's ''Vision of Mirza " will 
serve for illustration : '' On the fifth day of the moon 
— which, according to the custom of my forefathers, I 
always keep holy — after having washed myself and 
offered up my morning devotions, I ascended the high 
hills of Bagdat, in order to pass the rest of the day in 



STYLE 



87 



meditation and prayer. As I was here airing myself 
on the tops of the mountains, I fell into a profound 
contemplation on the vanity of human life ; and, pass- 
ing from one thought to another, ' Surely,' said I, ' man 
is but a shadow, and life a dream.' " 

(3) Exposition explains the nature or meaning of 
things. The purpose of description is to form a pic- 
ture ; of narration, to portray an event ; of exposition, 
to set forth the distinctive nature of an object or con- 
ception. The methods of exposition are various. In 
the first place, the distinguishing features of an object 
may be presented ; and in this case exposition partakes 
of the nature of description. In the second place, an 
object or idea may be explained by pointing out its 
effects ; and in this case exposition partakes of the 
character of narration. In the third place, we may 
explain or define an object or conception by indicat- 
ing its resemblance or its unlikeness to something else 
that is known. But whatever method of exposition is 
adopted, it should be full and definite enough to impart 
a clear idea of the thing explained. Every text-book 
will furnish examples of exposition ; the following is 
taken from Hitchcock's Geology " : ^' A volcano is an 
opening in the earth from whence matter has been 
ejected by heat, in the form of lava, scoria, or ashes. 
Usually the opening called the crater is an inverted 
cone ; and around it there rises a mountain in the form 
of a cone, with its apex truncated, produced by the ele- 
vation of the earth's crust and the ejection of lava." 

(4) Argumentation is the process of establishing the 
truth or falsity of a thing. The means it uses is called 



88 



KHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



proof or evidence, and will be considered more fully in 
a subsequent chapter treating of oratory. This proof 
or evidence may be derived from principles originating 
in the mind, in which case it is called intuitive ; or it may 
be found in external sources, in which case it is called 
empirical. The latter includes, among other forms of 
proof, a statement of facts, a consideration of the nature or 
circumstances of the case, the testimony of eyewitnesses, 
and an appeal to authority or generally accepted prin- 
ciples. When the argument is attended with an appeal 
to the feelings and will, it is known as persuasion. In 
the following extract, note the three facts adduced by 
Mark Antony to prove that Caesar was not ambitious. 

" He was my friend, faithful and just to me : 
But Brutus says he was ambitious ; 
And Brutus is an honorable man. 
He hath brought many captives home to Kome, 
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill : 
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious ? 
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept : 
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. 



You all did see that on the Lupercal 

I thrice presented him a kingly crown, 

Which he did thrice refuse : was this ambition ? " 

41. Generic Differences of Mind. As we have just 
seen, style is affected in a measure by the species of 
discourse. It is determined, further, by the mental 
constitution of the writer, and varies according to the 
dominance of particular faculties. We may distinguish 
four generic types of mind, which are reflected in four 
fundamental differences of style. 



STYLE 



89 



(1) When the logical faculties of the mind predom- 
inate, the style will be simple, direct, and plain. It 
is apt to be dry. The following extract from Locke's 
''Thoughts on Education " will serve for illustration: 
" I say this, that, when you consider of the breeding of 
your son, and are looking out for a schoolmaster, or a 
tutor, you would not have (as is usual) Latin and logic 
only in your thoughts. Learning must be had, but in 
the second place, as subservient only to greater quali- 
ties. Seek out somebody that may know how discreetly 
to frame his manners ; place him in hands, where you 
may, as much as possible, secure his innocence, cherish 
and nurse up the good, and gently correct and weed 
out any bad inclinations, and settle in him good habits. 
This is the main point; and, this being provided for, 
learning may be had into the bargain." 

(2) Again, the imagination may predominate. In this 
case the writer is continually leaving the main thought 
to bring in additional and embellishing id^as, particu- 
larly if he is a man of wide experience or great learn- 
ing. The result is apt to be an elaborate or stately 
style. Lowell's style is eminently characterized by a 
play of the imagination. His essay on Spenser begins 
as follows : '' Chaucer had been in his grave one hundred 
and fifty years ere England had secreted choice material 
enough for the making of another great poet. The 
nature of men living together in societies, as of the indi- 
vidual man, seems to have its periodic ebbs and floods, 
its oscillations between the ideal and the matter-of-fact, 
so that the doubtful boundary line of shore between 
them is in one generation a hard sandy actuality strewn 



90 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



only with such remembrances of beauty as a dead sea- 
moss here and there, and in the next is whelmed with 
those lacelike curves of ever-gaining, ever-receding foam, 
and that dance of joyous spray which for a moment 
catches and holds the sunshine." 

When the imagination is ill-governed, and especially 
in the case of inexperienced writers, the resulting style 
is apt to be florid or bombastic. The following passage 
from Headley's Sacred Mountains," connected with a 
description of the crucifixion, is imaginative extrava- 
gance, — a vain, artificial effort at the sublime : " I know 
not but all the radiant ranks on high, and even Gabriel 
himself, turned with the deepest solicitude to the Father's 
face, to see if He was calm and untroubled amid it all. 
I know not but His composed brow and serene majesty 
were all that restrained Heaven from one universal 
shriek of horror when they heard groans on Calvary — 
dying groans. I know not but they thought God had 
given His glory to another, but one thing I do know, 
that when they saw through the vast design, compre- 
hended the stupendous scene, the hills of God shook to 
a shout that never before rang over their bright tops, 
and the crystal sea trembled to a song that had never 
before stirred its bright depths, and the ' Glory to God 
in the Highest' was a sevenfold chorus of hallelujahs 
and harping symphonies." Thoughtful writers of refined 
taste are more reserved and reverent in speaking of 
occurrences in the celestial world. 

(3) Again, the sensibilities may be in the ascendant. 
There is then a quick and full response to the beauties 
of nature and human life. The style becomes warm. 



STYLE 



91 



graphic, glowing, pictorial. Unless held in check by 
intellectual culture, an excess of sensibility is likely to 
degenerate into sentimentalism. When combined with 
judgment and imagination, as in the case of Ruskin, an 
emotional temperament yields admirable results. Take 
the following splendid passage from Modern Painters," 
descriptive of a sunrise in the Alps : " Wait for one hour, 
until the east again becomes purple, and the heaving 
mountains, rolling against the darkness, like waves of a 
wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its 
burning ; watch the white glaciers blaze in their wind- 
ing paths about the mountains, like mighty serpents with 
scales of fire ; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, 
kindling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a 
new morning; their long avalanches cast down in keen 
streams brighter than the lightning, sending each its 
tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the 
heaven; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing 
that heaven about them and above them, piercing with 
purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, cast- 
ing a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until 
the whole heaven — one scarlet canopy — is interwoven 
with a roof of waving flame, and tossing, vault beyond 

i vault, as with the drifted wings of many companies of 
angels ; and then, when you can look no more for glad- 

' ness, and when you are bowed down with fear and love 
of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best 
delivered this His message unto men I" 

(4) Once more, force of will, firmness of conviction, 
energy of character are conducive to strength. Where 
these exist there will be directness of aim, and the style 



92 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



will be clear, unwavering, and strong. There will be 
positiveness of statement, and sometimes intolerant dog- 
matism. Carlyle and Macaulay are among our strong- 
est writers, the former being rugged, and the latter more 
polished in his strength. Macaulay's broad-shouldered, 
stout-limbed constitution is reflected in such passages 
as the following from his essay on Lord Bacon : The 
moral qualities of Bacon were not of a high order. We 
do not say that he was a bad man. He was not inhu- 
man or tyrannical. He bore with meekness his high 
civil honors, and the far higher honors gained by his 
intellect. He was very seldom, if ever, provoked into 
treating any person with malignity and insolence. No 
man more readily held up the left cheek to those who 
had smitten the right. No man was more expert at the 
soft answer which turneth away wrath. His faults were 
— we write it with pain — coldness of heart and mean- 
ness of spirit. He seems to have been incapable of feel- 
ing strong affection, of facing great dangers, of making 
great sacrifices. His desires were set on things below. 
Wealth, precedence, titles, patronage, the mace, the seals, 
the coronet, large houses, fair gardens, rich manors, mas- 
sive services of plate, gay hangings, curious cabinets, 
had as great attractions for him as for any of the court- 
iers who dropped on their knees in the dirt when Eliza- 
beth passed, and then hastened home to write to the King 
of Scots that her Grace seemed to be breaking fast." 

42. Symmetrical Faculties. When the mental facul- 
ties are symmetrical and harmonious in their operation, 
no particular feature of style may stand out prominent. 
It will bend to suit the exigencies of the subject. It 



STYLE 



93 



will rise and sink with the varying thought and feel- 
ing. It will be judicious, and at times commonplace. 
But if, at the same time, mental symmetry is united with 
fineness of fiber and with adequate culture and practice, 
the style will probably be, as in the case of Addison and 
Irving, full of grace and elegance. Note the easy grace 
with which Addison begins his first paper on the " Pleas- 
ures of the Imagination": "Our sight is the most per- 
fect and most delightful of all our senses. It fills the 
mind with the largest variety of ideas, converses with its 
objects at the greatest distance, and continues longest 
in action without being tired or satiated with its proper 
enjoyments. The sense of feeling can indeed give us 
a notion of extension, shape, and all other ideas that 
enter at the eye, except colors ; but at the same time it 
is very much strained, and confined in its operations, to 
the number, bulk, and distance of its particular objects. 
Our sight seems designed to supply all these defects, 
and may be considered as a more delicate and diffusive 
kind of touch, that spreads itself over an infinite multi- 
tude of bodies, comprehends the largest figures, and 
brings into our reach some of the most remote parts of 
the universe." 

Every passing mood and every peculiarity of mind 
or character are reflected in the style. It may be gay, 
humorous, serious, sad, melancholy, according to the 
, state of the writer's feelings. It may be colloquial or 
'stately, concise or diffuse, plain or florid, flowing or 
abrupt, feeble or energetic, natural or affected, common- 
jplace or epigrammatic, — as varied, in fact, as the 
character and mental constitution of the writers. But 



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every writer has a prevailing style ; and it is an inter- 
esting study to determine the nature of his mind and 
character from his vrorks. 

43. Importance of Style. A good style is a matter 
of importance. The success or failure of a literary work 
depends largely upon the manner in which its state- 
ments are presented. The classic works of Greece and 
Rome owe their popularity and influence not so much 
to the facts which they contain as to the art with which 
their contents are given. Our most popular English 
writings, especially in fiction and poetry, owe their 
vogue, in no small degree, to some excellence or charm 
of style. It is chiefly in history, science, and philos- 
ophy that the weight of fact and thought may be in 
a measure independent of style. Darwin's " Origin of 
Species " would be a great book even if its style were 
far more uninteresting than is really the case. 



STYLE 



95 



REVIEW QUESTIONS 

39. What is style? Whence does it derive its characteristics? 
What is Buffon's remark? Who become imitators? 40. What four 
general kinds of discourse are there ? To ^vhat four kinds of style 
do they lead ? What is description ? AVhat is its purpose ? What 
two kinds of description are there ? Illustrate. What is narra- 
tion ? How is it related to description ? Where is it dominant ? 
How should its facts be presented ? What is necessary in artistic 
narration? Illustrate. What is exposition? How does it differ 
from description and narration? What three kinds of exposition 
are mentioned? What constitutes a good exposition ? Illustrate. 
What is argumentation ? What means does it use ? What two 
kinds of proof are mentioned ? What may constitute empirical 
proof ? Illustrate. 

41. What further determines style? What four generic types 
of mind are there ? What is the result when the logical faculties 
are dominant ? What is the effect of a dominant imagination ? 
What author is quoted in illustration ? When the imagination is 
ill-regulated, what is the result ? What illustration is given? What 
is the effect of strong sensibilities ? Into w^hat may sentiment 
degenerate ? What is the result when combined with judgment 
and imagination ? Who is quoted in illustration ? What is the 
effect of will power ? Who are mentioned as strong writers ? 

42. What is said of symmetrical faculties? What will be the 
result when united with delicacy and culture? Who are men- 
tioned in illustration? What may be reflected in style? What 
kinds of style thus result ? Why has every writer a distinctive 
style? 43. Why is a good style important? To what do many 
writings, ancient and modern, owe their popularity ? 



96 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following extracts should be carefully studied. 
The diction, forms of sentences, and figures, as pre- 
sented in the two preceding chapters, may be investi- 
gated along with the further elements of style just 
considered. Such questions as the following may be 
applied to the selections : 

What kind of discourse is it? Is it descriptive? Is it objec- 
tive or subjective ? What points are described ? Is it narrative ? 
Is it expository ? By what means is the elucidation made ? Is 
it argumentative ? What kind of proof is used ? Is the thought 
the chief concern of the writer ? Is the piece imaginative ? Does 
it abound in adjectives? Does it present pictures? Is it stately 
and in full dress? What faculty predominates? Does it glow 
with feeling ? Does it reach the point of sentimentalism ? Does 
it show a love of nature ? of humanity ? Do the emotions count 
for more than the thought? Is it energetic or vehement? Has 
the writer positive convictions ? Is he hesitating or dogmatic ? 
Is it graceful or elegant ? Does it exhibit eccentricity or sanity ? 
Is it smooth, abrupt, laconic, epigrammatic, humorous, colloquial ? 
Are there other characteristics ? 

Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm ; 

And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands ; 

Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf 

In cluster ; then a mouldered church ; and higher 

A long street climbs to one tall-towered mill ; 

And high in heaven behind it a gray down 

With Danish barrows ; and a hazel-wood. 

By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes 

Green in a cuplike hollow of the down. — Tennyson. 

The Normans gave way. The English pressed forward. A cry 
went forth among the Xorman troops that Duke William was 
killed, Duke William took off his helmet, in order that his 



STYLE 



97 



face might be distinctly seen, and rode along the line before his 
men. This gave them courage. As they turned again to face 
the English, some of the J^^orman horse divided the pursuing 
body of the English from the rest, and thus all that foremost 
portion of the English army fell, fighting bravely. — Dickens. 

Poetry of late has been termed a force, or mode of force, very 
much as if it were the heat, or light, or motion known to physics. 
And, in truth, ages before our era of scientific reductions, the 
energia — the vital energy — of the minstrel's song was undis- 
puted. It seems to me, in spite of all we hear about materialism, 
that the sentiment imparting this energy ^ — the poetic impulse, 
at least — has seldom been more forceful than at this moment. 

Stedman. 

How inexhaustibly the spirit grows ! 

One object, she seemed erewhile born to reach 

With her whole energies and die content, — 

So like a wall at the world's edge it stood. 

With nought beyond to live for, — is that reached ? — 

Already are new undreamed energies 

Outgrowing under, and extending farther 

To a new object; there 's another world! — Browning. 

I have heard that nothing gives an author so great pleasure as 
to find his works respectfully quoted by other learned authors. 
This pleasure I have seldom enjoyed ; for though I have been, if 
I may say it without vanity, an eminent author (of almanacs) 
annually, now a full quarter of a century, my brother authors in 
the same way (for what reason I know not) have ever been very 
sparing in their applauses; and no other author has taken the 
least notice of me : so that, did not my writings produce me 
some solid pudding, the great deficiency of praise would have 
quite discouraged me. — Franklin. 

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their 
chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring ; for ornament, 
is in discourse ; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposi- 
tion of business ; for expert men can execute, and perhaps judge 



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RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



of particulars, one by one ; but the general counsels, and the 
plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are 
learned. To spend too much time in studies, is sloth ; to use 
them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment 
wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar : they perfect 
nature, and are perfected by experience ; for natural abilities 
are like natural plants, that need pruning by study ; and studies 
themselves do give forth directions too much at large except they 
be bounded in by experience. — Bacon. 

We want the same glorious privileges which we enjoy to go 
down to our children. We cannot sleep well the last sleep, nor 
will the pillow of dust be easy to our heads until we are assured 
that the God of our American institutions in the past, will be 
the God of our American institutions in the days that are to 
come. Oh, when all the rivers which empty into the Atlantic 
and . Pacific seas shall pull on factory bands, when all the great 
mines of gold, and silver, and iron, and coal shall be laid bare 
for the nation, when the last swamp shall be reclaimed, and the 
last jungle cleared, and the last American desert Edenized, and 
from sea to sea the continent shall be occupied by more than 
twelve hundred million souls, may it be found that moral and 
religious influences were multiplied in more rapid ratio than the 
population. And then there shall be four doxologies coming 
from north, and south, and east, and west — four doxologies 
rolling toward each other and meeting mid-continent with such 
dash of holy joy that they shall mount to the throne, 

Talmage. 

Books ! 't is a dull and endless strife : 

Come, hear the woodland linnet, 
How sweet his music ! on my life, 

There 's more of wisdom in it. 
♦ 

And hark ! how blithe the throstle sings ! 

He, too, is no mean preacher; 
Come forth into the light of things, 

Let Nature be your teacher. — Wordsworth. 



STYLE 



She is sensible of my sufferings. This morning her look 
pierced to my very soul. I found her alone, and she was silent ; 
she steadfastly surveyed me. I no longer saw in her face the 
charm of beauty or the fire of genius ; these had disappeared. 
But I was affected by an expression much more touching, a look 
of the deepest sympathy and of the softest pity. Why was I 
afraid to throw myself at her feet ? Why did I not dare to take 
her in my arms, and answer her by a thousand kisses ? She had 
recourse to her piano for relief, and in a low and sweet voice 
accompanied the music with delicious sounds. Her lips never 
appeared so lovely ; they seemed but just to open, that they might 
imbibe the sweet tones which issued from the instrument, and 
retmm the heavenly vibration from her lovely mouth. Oh !. who 
can express my sensations ? I was quite overcome, and, bending 
j down, pronounced this vow : " Beautiful lips, which the angels 
I guard, never will I seek to profane your purity with a kiss." 

Goethe. 

The only happiness a brave man ever troubled himself 
with asking much about w^as happiness enough to get his work 
done. Not " I can't eat ! " but " I can't work ! " that was the 
burden of all wise complaining among men. It is, after all, the 
! one unhappiness of a man. That he cannot work ; that he cannot 
get his destiny as a man fulfilled. Behold, the day is passing 
tj swiftly over, our life is passing swiftly over ; and the night 
' Cometh, wherein no man can work. The night once come, our 
j happiness, our unhappiness, — it is all abolished ; vanished, clean 
I gone ; a thing that has been : not of the slightest consequence 
' whether we were as happy as eupeptic Curtis, as the fattest pig 
of Epicurus, or unhappy as Job with potsherds, as musical Byron 
with Giaours and sensibilities of the heart. But our work, — 
behold, that is not abolished, that has not vanished : our work, 
behold, it remains, or the want of it remains ; for endless Times 
and Eternities, remains ; and that is now the sole question with 
us forevermore. — Carlyle. 

Among the powers in man which suffer by this too intense 
life of the social instincts, none suffers more than the power of 



100 



RHETORICAL ELEMENTS 



dreaming. Let no man think this a trifle. The machinery for 
dreaming planted in the human brain was not planted for nothing. 
That faculty, in alliance with the mystery of darkness, is the one 
great tube through which man communicates w ith the shadowy. 
And the dreaming organ, in connection with the heart, the eye, 
and the ear, composes the magnificent apparatus which forces 
the infinite into the chambers of a human brain, and throws 
dark reflections from eternities below all life upon the mirrors of 
the sleeping mind. — De Quincey. 

Thus with the year 
Seasons return ; but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
But cloud instead and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge fair. 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and rased, 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 

Milton. 

It happened one day, about noon, going towards my boat, I 
was exceedingly surprised with the print of a man's naked foot 
on the shore, which was very plain to be seen in the sand. I 
stood like one thunder-struck, or as if I had seen an apparition. 
I listened, I looked around me, I could hear nothing, nor see 
anything. I went up to a rising ground to look farther. I went 
up the shore, and down the shore, but it was all one, I could see 
no other impressions but that one. I went to it again to see if 
there were any more, and to observe if it might not be my fancy ; 
but there was no room for that, for there was exactly the very 
print of a foot, toes, heel, and every part of a foot. How it came 
thither I knew not, nor could in the least imagine. — Defoe. 



STYLE 



•101 



^N'OTE 

It would be well to apply the critical principles of this chapter, 
and indeed of the entire Part Second, to some brief but complete 
work. For this purpose the teacher might assign Macaulay's 
« Essay on Milton," De Quincey's " Joan of Arc," Tennyson's 
" Enoch Arden," Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration," or 
some other similar work. After determining the diction, pre- 
vailing type of sentences, and figures of speech, let the student 
divide the work, as far as possible, into its descriptive, narrative, 
expository, argumentative, and persuasive portions. In many 
cases the various kinds of discourse will be so interwoven that 
the classification will be doubtful and difficult. At the same 
time the student might point out the passages in which thought, 
imagination, feeling, or energy of will predominates in a marked 
degree. The effort should be made accurately to characterize 
the author's style as a whole. 



Paet Tiiied 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 

CHAPTER VII 

NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF POETRY 

44. Definition. We may approximately define poetry 
as the metrical expression of lofty or beautiful thought, 
^ feeling, or action, in imaginative and artistic form. Its 
j metrical character distinguishes it from prose ; for tliere 
I is no such thing as prose poetry, though we sometimes 
find, as in the best passages of Ruskin, poetical prose. 
: Its aesthetic idea or content, its exquisite diction, and 
j its artistic form distinguisli genuine poetry from mere 
jl verse, which is the mechanical or unartistic expression 
of commonplace thought, feeling, or incident. Poetry 
I is, in large measure, a product of the creative imagina- 
jtion; and in its highest forms there must be energy 
. of passion, intensity yet delicacy of feeling, loftiness of 
I thought, depth and clearness of intuitive vision. It is 
[ the metrical expression of an exaltation of soul, which 
sometimes suffuses the objects of nature and the scenes 
of human life with a beauty and glory of its own, — 

" The light that never was on sea or land, 
The consecration and the poet's dream." 
103 



104 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



45. Poetry and Prose. Poetry occupies a region above 
prose. While prose in its highest flights approaches the 
plane of poetry, and poetry in its lowest descent touches 
the level of prose, they are yet essentially different. 
The one is commonplace, the other elevated or ideal. 
This truth is brought out clearly when we compare the 
same fact or incident of history as related in poetry and 
prose. The ''^neid" is very unlike a prose account 
of the founding of Rome. We sometimes say in plain 
prose, "The evening passed pleasantly and quickly"; 
but when the poet describes it, there is an elevation of 
thought and glow of feeling that make it ideal : 

" The twilight hours like birds flew by, 

As lightly and as free ; 
Ten thousand stars were in the sky, 

Ten thousand in the sea. 
For every wave wath dimpled face 

That leaped upon the air. 
Had caught a star in its embrace, 

And held it trembling there." 

46. Sources of Poetry. Nature is filled with poetry. 
The great poet is God, and he has filled the universe 
with rhythm, harmony, beauty. Human poems are but 
faulty shells gathered on the shore of the divine ocean 
of poetry. The stars are the poetry of the skies. The 
planets and stellar systems that circle in their glorious 
orbits preserve a sublime harmony of movement. The 
light that reaches us from distant worlds comes to us in 
rhythmical wavelets. Every human life is a poem, — 
often an amusing comedy, but still oftener a moving 
tragedy. The tender friendships, the innocent joys, the 



NATUEE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 105 



noble aspirations, the high achieyements of men, form 
the lyric poetry of human existence. The ripphng of 
the forest stream within its shady banks of fern, the 
rhythmical roll and heavy roar of the ocean surges, are 
the poetry of the sparkling waters. The audible silence 
and mysterious whisperings of the dark and majestic 
forest, the modest hiding of the little violet that gives 
charm to some neglected spot, — this is the poetry of the 
woods and fields. Whether we look upon earth, or air, or 
sky, we may be sure that the unwritten poetry of God is 
there. In our best moments we feel its presence, — its 
mute yet eloquent appeal to our higher natures. It lifts 
us up into fellowship with Him who thus speaks to us. 

47. The Poet. When material interests dominate the 
life of a people, the poet is generally undervalued. He 
is apt to be regarded as an unpractical, or even an 
eccentric and valueless member of society. Too often 
the eccentricities of genius afford some basis for this 
prejudice ; but it is wholly groundless in the case of 
the largest and most gifted of the poetic race. High 
poetic gifts are favorable to the noblest types of man- 
hood. The great poet, beyond all other men, possesses 
an intuitive insight into truth, depth of feeling, and 
appreciation of beauty. These gifts lift the poet out of 
the rank of common men, and make him, in his moments 
of highest inspiration, a prophet to his people. In the 
language of Bailey in his Festus," — 

''Poetry is' itself a thing of God; 
He made His prophets poets, and the more 
We feel of poesy, do we become 
Like God in love and power — under makers." 



106 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



Among the greatest of every nation, whether ancient i 
or modern, poets stand almost preeminent. In the Old 
Testament history there is no one greater than ^'the j 
sweet Psalmist of Israel." Homer stands in almost soli- ' 
tary grandeur in the early annals of Greece. In the 
history of Italy, what name is to be placed above that of 
Dante ? In England there are, perhaps, no names to be 
ranked above those of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, . 
Tennyson, whose imperishable works abide with us, and 1 
in no small degree mould the thought and feeling of 
each succeeding generation. And among the illustrious S 
citizens of our own country there are few or none who i 
have reached a higher nobility of character than its great » 
singers, — Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Hayne, and ^ 
Lowell. Their lives were no less sane than beautiful. 

48. The Poet as Seer. The poet is preeminently a seer. 
He discerns the divine beauty and truth of life which 
escape the common sight ; and because he reveals them ^ 
to us in his melodious art he becomes an exalted teacher. 
In the midst of the tumults of greed and gain he lifts up 
his voice to witness of higher things. In the presence ; 
of what seemed to her a sordid generation, Mrs. Brown- ' 
ing calls poets 

^< The only truth-tellers now left to God, 
The only speakers of essential truth, 
Opposed to relative, comparative, 

And temporal truths ; the only holders by ^ 
His sun-skirts, through conventional gray glooms ; 
The only teachers who instruct mankind, 
From just a shadow on a charnel-wall, 
To find man's veritable stature out. 
Erect, sublime — the measure of a man." 



MATURE AND STRUCTURE OF POETRY 107 



The poet, with his intenser nature, gives expression 
to our deepest thoughts and feelings. What we have 
often felt but vaguely, he utters for us in imperishable 
forms. In how many things Shakespeare has voiced 
the human soul I While poetry has rippling measures 
suited to our smiles, it belongs, in its richest form, to 
the deeper side of our nature. Its loftiest numbers are 
given to truth and righteousness, to the tragic strivings 
and sorrows of life, and to the mysteries of deathless 
love. 

49. Versification. Versification is the science of mak- 
ing verse. The unit or starting point in versification is 
the syllable, which may be long or shorty according to the 
time it requires in pronouncing, and accented or unac- 
cented^ according to the stress of tone with which it is 
■pronounced. Quantity^ by which is meant the length of 
syllables, formed the basis of versification in Latin and 
Greek poetry ; but in English poetry it is used to give 
variety, music, or some other element of effectiveness to 
the verse. This may be illustrated in a well-known pas- 
sage from Pope : 

" When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw, 
The line, too, labors, and the words move slow ; 
Xot so, when swift Camilla scours the plain. 
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main." 

The first two lines occupy more time in reading 
jjlthan the last two, the sound in each case corresponding 
ijin some measure to the sense. An examination of the 
! lines will show that the first two have more long vowel 

Counds than the last two, and that these and other vowel 
, ounds are lengthened in pronunciation by the presence 



108 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



of difficult consonant combinations. " Ajax strives * 
and^' rock's vast weight "are not phrases that slip quickh 
from the tongue. Furthermore, the second line is length 
ened by no fewer than three pauses. 

The principle of English verse is accent^ and no 
quantity. In the line, 

The mossy marbles rest," 

it will be observed that every other syllable receives r 
stress of voice or is accented. The scheme of the verse 
may be represented as follows : 

the line being broken up into three equal and simila] 
parts, each of which is called Sifoot. The foot consist 
ing of an unaccented followed by an accented syllable, 
is called an iambus. !] 
In the line. 

Home they brought her warrior dead," 

we observe that beginning with the first syllable every' 
other one is accented, giving us the following as the 
scheme of the verse : 

jL ^\J_. 

The last foot is obviously incomplete or catalectic. 
The foot that consists of two syllables, the first of 
which is accented, is called a trochee. It is the oppo- 
site of the iambus. 

Again, in the line, 

" This is the forest primeval ; the murmuring pines and the 
hemlocks," 



XATURE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 109 



it will be noticed that, beginning with the first, each 
accented syllable is followed by two unaccented sylla- 
bles, except in the last foot, which is a trochee. The 
scheme of the verse is as follows : 



This foot, consisting of one accented syllable, fol- 
lowed by two unaccented syllables, is called a dactyl, 
I Once more, in the line, 

' ^- Through the depths of Loch Katrine the steed shall career," 

the third syllable is accented, and the scheme of the 
verse may be thus indicated : 

\j \u J-\ \j \j J- \ ^ \j J-\ \j \j _L. 

. This foot, which is the opposite of the dactyl, is 
Known as the anapest, 

A spondee is a foot of two equally accented syllables ; 
is, mainspring^ sea-maid. There is still another foot, 
mown as the amphihrach^ which consists of three sylla- 
^r-'Oles, the second of which is accented, as in the word 
Ae-ni'-ah The scheme of the following line. 

The flesh was a picture for painters to study," 

nay be indicated thus : 

"-u — \ — \j \ \j — \j \ \j -L. \j . 

But nearly all English poetry is based upon the 
'^rl'our feet, — iambus.^ trochee, dactyl, and anapest, — first 
^'iven. 

50. Meters. A verse is named from the number of 
,j)revailing feet. A verse containing one iambic foot 
s called iambic monometer ; two feet, iambic dimeter; 



i 



110 KINDS OF LITERATURE 

three feet, iambic trimeter ; four feet, iambic tetrameter ; 
five feet, iambic pentameter ; six feet, iambic hexameter. 
The line, 

"The twilight hours like birds flew by," 

is made up of four iambic feet, and is therefore an 
iambic tetrameter. Iambic pentameter^ in which Milton's 
" Paradise Lost," much of Pope's poetry, Shakespeare's 
dramas, and, indeed, a large proportion of English verse, 
are written, is called heroic measure. 

In like manner we have trochaic monometer, dimeter^ 
trimeter, tetrayneter, pentameter^ and hexameter. The 
following line, 

" As unto the bow the cord is/* 

is trochaic tetrameter,, which is the meter of " Hiawatha." 

The foregoing are called dissyllabic meters ; but the 
trisyllabic measures have the same names according to 
the number of feet. A verse consisting of a single dac- 
tyl is thus dactylic monometer ; of two dactyls, dactylic 
dimeter; and so on up to dactylic hexameter, which is 
the meter of Homer's "Iliad," Vergil's ''^neid," and 
Longfellow's Evangeline " and " Courtship of Miles 
Standish." The line, 

" Softly the breezes descend in the valley," 

is dactylic tetrameter, though the last foot is a trochee. 

In like manner we have anapestic lines of all lengths 
from monometer to hexameter. The line, 

How she smiled, and I could not but love," 

contains three anapests, and is therefore anapestic 
trimeter. 



NATURE AND STRUCTURE OF POETRY 111 



But the time element of a poetic foot is important, 
as it explains the seeming irregularities often met with 
in verse. An additional syllable may be added to a 
foot or subtracted from it when the time of the foot or 
verse is not changed. By rapid utterance two syllables 
are often equal to one, and in this way an anapest is 
frequently used with the time value of an iambus. In 
like manner a pause may sometimes take the place of 
an unaccented syllable. Both cases are fully illustrated 
in Tennyson's well-known lyric, — 

" Break, break, break, 
On thy cold gray stones, O sea ! " 

In spite of the seeming irregularity of this poem, the 
presence of the proper time element, together with the 
regular accents, preserves its metrical harmony. 

There are few poems without slight metrical irregu- 
larities. The meter is varied to prevent monotony, to 
give emphasis to a word, or to respond better to some 
turn of the thought or feeling. Take, for example, the 
following couplet from Wordsworth : 

To me the meanest floT^-er that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears." 

The meter is iambic pentameter; but the first 
foot of the second line is a trochee, and emphasizes 
thoughts with fine effect. The time of the line remains 
unchanged. 

In Milton we read, — 

Leviathan, -which God of all his Avorks 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream.'' 



112 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



This is likewise iambic pentameter ; but in the sec- 
ond line a clumsy anapestic foot is inserted to corre- 
spond to the nature of the monster described. No 
doubt irregularities sometimes occur by oversight or 
from lack of skill ; but with our greater poets, whose 
thought and emotion instinctively assume the proper 
metrical form, the irregularities are motived. 

51. Rhyme. Rhyme^ or as it is more correctly spelled 
rime^ is a similarity of sound between words or sylla- 
bles. Identity of sound, as heir^ aii\ site^ sights is not 
rhyme. It usually occurs between words at the end of 
a verse, and serves to lend both beauty and emphasis 
to poetry. The order in which rhymes occur is various. 
They may be found in succeeding lines ; as, — 

The tear down childhood's cheek that flows 
Is like the dewdrop on the rose ; 
When next the summer breeze comes by, 
And shakes the bush, the flower is dry." 

They may occur in alternate lines ; as, — 

The sun has long been set ; 

The stars are out by twos and threes ; 
The little birds are piping yet 

Among the bushes and the trees." 

Or the rhymes may occur at longer intervals ; as, - — 

" I envy not in any moods 

The captive void of noble rage, 
The linnet born within the cage, 
That never knew the summer woods.'' 



In double rhyme the correspondence of sound ex- 
tends to two syllables, and in trij^ile rhyme to three. 



NATURE AXD STEUGTURE OF POETKY 113 



double rhyme^ 2iS pleasure^ measure^ is also called fem- 
inine^ while single rhymes are called masculine. The 
!f olio wing illustrates both double^ or feminine^ and mas- 
culine rhymes : 

" 'T is the hour when happy faces 
Smile around the taper's light ; 
Who will fill our vacant places? 

Who will sing our songs to-night ? " 

The following from Hood illustrates triple rhyme : 

Take her up tenderly, 

Lift her with care ; 
Fashioned so slenderly, 

Young and so fair." 

Triple rhyme is usually employed only in a light, 
satirical, or mocking vein. B}T?on uses it frequently 
in his frivolous or reckless moods ; for example, — 

" O world that was and is I What is co.<niorjnny ? 
Some people have accused me of nusanthropy, 
And yet I know no more than the maliogony 

That forms this desk of what they mean ; lycanthropy 
I comprehend ; for, without transformation 
' Men become wolves on any slight occasion." 

Middle rhyme is that which exists between the middle 
and final words or syllables of a verse. It is frequently 
used in the The Ancient Mariner : *' 

" The fair breeze Ueic, the white foam jiew, 
The furrow followed free : 
We were the^A^r>^^ that ever hurst 
Into that silent sea." 



114 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



Sectional rhyme is that occurring in the first half or 
section of a verse ; as, — 

Lightly and brightly breaks away 
The morning from her mantle gray." 

Alliteration is the use of the same letter at the begin- 
ning of two or more words or syllables in the same 
verse or successive verses. It was the determining 
principle in Anglo-Saxon poetry, and has remained ever 
since a source of harmony in English verse. Its effects 
are sometimes most pleasing when the alliteration turns 
on one or more internal syllables. The following from 
Mrs. Browning's "Romance of the Swan's Nest" will 
serve for illustration : 

"Zittle E/^ie sits a/one, 

And the smile she softly uses 
Fi^/s the silence /ike a speech, 

Tl^hile she thinks zt'hat shall be done, 
And the sweetest pleasure chooses 
i^or her /uture within reach." 

The light rippling melody of this stanza is due, in 
considerable measure, to its fine alliterative structure. 

Tennyson likewise makes effective use of alliteration, 
as may be noted especially in the matchless lyrics inter- 
spersed throughout The Princess." A single stanza 
will make this clear : 

The splendor falls on castle walls 

And snowy summits old in story; 
The long /ight shakes across the Zakes 
And the wd/d cataract /eaps in gZory. 
51ow, Jugle, &low, set the wdld echoes flying, 
^low, 6ugle ; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying." 



^s^ATURE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 115 



52. Stanzas. A stanza is a separate division of a 
poem, and contains two or more lines or verses. A 
stanza of two lines is called a couplet ; of three lines, 
a triplet ; of four lines, a quatraiyi, Tennyson's " Locks- 
ley Hall " is in two-line stanza : 

" Men, my brothers, men the workers, ever reaping something 
new ; 

That which they have done but earnest of the things that they 
shall do." 

His " Two Voices " is in the triplet stanza : 

" A still small voice spake unto me, 
' Thou art so full of misery. 
Were it not better not to be ? ' 

^< Then to the still small voice I said, 
* Let me not cast in endless shade 
What is so wonderfully made.' " 

Numerous examples of the four-line stanza have 
already been given. 

Rhyme royal is a seven-line stanza invented by 
Chaucer. As will be seen from the following example, 
it is made up of iambic pentameter lines, the first four 
forming a quatrain of alternate rhymes, the fifth line 
repeating the rhyme of the fourth, and the last two lines 
forming a rhyming couplet. Its scheme is a b a b b c 
in which the same letters indicate rhymes. 

" For lo ! the sea that fleets about the land. 
And like a girdle clips her solid waist. 
Music and measure both doth understand, 
For his great crystal eye is always cast 
Up to the moon, and on her fixeth fast ; 
And as she circles in her pallid sphere, 
So danceth he about the centre here." 



116 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



Ottava rima is composed of eight iambic pentameter 
verses with alternate rhymes, except the last two lines, 
which form a rhymed couplet. Byron's Don Juan " 
is written in this stanza. The scheme of rhyme is a 6 
a b a b c c. 

'T is sweet to hear the watch-dog's honest bark 

Bay deep-mouthed welcome as w^e draw near home ; 

'T is sweet to know there is an eye will mark 
Our coming, and look brighter when we come ; 

'Tis sweet to be awakened by the lark 

Or lulled by falling waters ; sweet the hum 

Of bees, the voice of girls, the song of birds, 

The lisp of children, and their earliest words." 

The Spenserian stanza, invented by Edmund Spenser 
and employed by him in the " Faerie Queene," is a dif- 
ficult but effective form of poetry. It consists of nine 
verses, the first eight being iambic pentameter, and the 
ninth line iambic hexameter, or Alexandrine. Its rhyme 
scheme isababbcbce. The following from Byron's 
" Childe Harold " will serve for illustration: 

" To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell, 
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene. 
Where things that own not man's dominion dwell, 
And mortal foot hath ne'er or rarely been ; 
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, 
With the wild flock that never needs a fold ; 

Alone o'er steeps and foaming falls to lean ; 
This is not solitude ; 't is but to hold 
Converse with Nature's charms, and view her stores unrolled." 

The principal hymn stanzas are known as long meter, 
common meter, and short meter. The long-meter stanza 



i^ATUEE AND STRUCTURE OF POETRY 117 



is composed of four iambic tetrameter lines, rhyming 
either alternately or in couplets ; as, 

" Wide as the world is Thy command ; 
Vast as eternity Thy love ; 
Firm as a rock Thy truth must stand, 
When rolling years shall cease to move." 

The common-meter stanza contains four iambic lines, 
the first and third being tetrameter, and the second and 
fourth trimeter. The rhymes are alternate ; as, 

Eternity, with all its years, 

Stands present to Thy view; 
To Thee there 's nothing old appears, 

To Thee there 's nothing new." 

The short-meter stanza consists of four iambic lines, 
the first, second, and fourth being trimeter, and the third 
tetrameter. The rhymes are alternate ; as, 

" Let good or ill hefall, 

It must be good for me ; 
Secure of having Thee in all, 
Of having all in Thee." 

53. Blank Verse. Unrhymed poetry, usually in iam- 
bic pentameter measure, is known as hlayik verse. It is 
our ordinary epic and dramatic verse, as exemplified in 
Shakespeare and Milton. Blank verse has greater free- 
dom than rhymed verse, but the attainment of a high 
degree of excellence in it is scarcely less difficult. It 
approaches the ease and freedom of prose, and perhaps for 
that reason it is apt to sink below a high level of poetry. 

Apart from its diction and meter, the harmony of blank 
verse depends upon two things, — namely, its pauses 



118 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



and its periods. The rhythmical pause occurring in a 
line is called a coesura. Though usually falling near 
the middle of the line, the csesural pause may occur at 
any point, and sometimes there may be two caesuras. 
There is generally a rhythmical pause at the end of a 
verse, and when this pause is stressed by a completion 
of the sense the line is said to be end-stopt but if 
the sense awaits completion in the following verse, the 
line is said to be " run-on." The French name enjambe- 
ment is sometimes used to designate a "run-on" line. 
The following extract from Thomson will serve to illus- 
trate the caesural pauses, as well as "end-stopt" and 
"run-on" lines: 

" These as they change, | Almighty Father, | these 
Are but the varied God. | The rolHng year 
Is full of thee. | Forth in the pleasant Spring 
Thy beauty walks, | thy tenderness and love. 
Wide flush the fields ; | the softening air is balm ; 
Echo the mountains round ; | the forest smiles ; 
And every sense, | and every heart, | is joy. 
Then conies thy glory | in the summer months 
With light and heat refulgent. | Then thy sun 
Shoots full perfection | through the swelling year.'' 

By period is meant the conclusion of the sentence. 
The period or end of a sentence may fall at the end of 
a line or at any point in it. The period serves to break 
up the poem into longer or shorter parts. In Milton 
the sentences are generally long, and the periods thus 
break up the poem into a sort of stanza of varying 
length. Run-on " lines are the prevailing type ; and 
this fact, in connection with the length of the sentences 



NATURE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 119 



and the constant shifting of the pauses, imparts to his 
''Paradise Lost" its peculiar organ roll. The following 
passage will serve to make this clear : 

Of man's first disobedience, | and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, | Trhose mortal taste 
Brought death into our world, | and all our woe, 
With loss of Eden, | till one greater Man 
Restore us, | and regain the blissful seat, 
Sing, Heavenly Muse, | that on the secret top 
Of Oreb, | or of Sinai, ' didst inspire 
That shepherd | who first taught the chosen seed 
In the beginning j how the heavens and earth 
Rose out of Chaos. 

Or, if Sion hill 
Delight thee more, | and Siloa's brook that flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God, | I thence 
Invoke thy aid | to my adventurous song, 
That with no middle flight j intends to soar 
Above the Aonian mount, \ while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet | in prose or rhyme." 

These sixteen lines practically make two stanzas. 
Twelve lines, or three fourths of the whole num^ber, are 
run-on." The caesural pause^ as will be seen on count- 
ing the feet in connection with which they occur, is 
exceedingly varied. 

With the two foregoing extracts may be compared the 
following from Shelley's Alastor," in which all the 
periods are " end-stopt," and divide the selection into 
clearly recognizable and almost regular stanzas. It will 
be noted that the movement and effect are very different 
from those of Thomson and Milton. 



120 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



" There was a poet | whose untimely tomb 
No human hand | with pious reverence reared, 
But the charmed eddies | of autumnal winds 
Built o'er his mouldering bones | a pyramid 
Of mouldering leaves | in the waste wilderness. 

" A lovely youth, | no mourning maiden decked 
With weeping flowers | or votive cypress wreath 
The lone couch | of his everlasting sleep ; 
Gentle and brave and generous, | no lorn bard 
Breathed o'er his dark fate [ one melodious sigh ; 
He lived, he died, he sang, | in solitude. 

Strangers have wept | to hear his passionate notes ; 
And virgins, | as unknown he passed, | have pined 
And wasted | for fond love of his wild eyes. 

" The fire of those soft orbs | has ceased to burn, 
And Silence, | too enamored of that voice. 
Locks its mute music | in her rugged cell." 

It will be observed that not only all the periods, bu 
also twelve out of the seventeen lines are ^' end-stopt." 

54. Poetic Style. By poetic style is meant the choic- 
and arrangement of words peculiar to poetry. While ii 
the main poetic and prose diction is the same, still ther< 
are words and verbal combinations admissible only ii 
poetry. Poetry strives after concreteness and vividnes^ 
of expression. Such words as steed^ swain., wight^ muse 
Pegasus^ yclept, a-cold, sprent, bower, meed, isle, a-field 
dight, sooth, hight, and many others, are hardly ever me 
with in ordinary prose. Their prose equivalents ar 
generally preferred. 

Poetry uses great freedom, called poetic license, in th( 
order of words and construction of sentences. Thi 
principal deviations from the prose order are as follows 



NATURE AXD STRLXTURE OF POETRY 121 

(1) The verb may precede the subject for the sake of 
emphasis or meter; as, 

Came a troop v^ith broad swords swinging." 

(2) The verb may follow its object ; as, 

" Tliee, shepherd, tliee the woods, and desert caves, 
And all their echoes, mourn." 

(3) The infinitiye may precede the word on which it 
depends ; as, 

" When first thy sire, to send on earth 
Virtue, his darling child, designed." 

(4) Prepositional phrases may precede the yerbs they 
modify ; as, 

" Of man's first disobedience^ sing. Heavenly Muse." 

(5) The preposition may follow the noun it goy- 
erns ; as, 

From peak to pjeak, the rattling crags among. 
Leaps the live thunder." 

(6) Adyerbs may precede the words they modify; as, 

The plowman Jiomeirard plods his weary way." 

(7) Condensed expressions in tlie form of compound 
epithets are frequently used : as, 

O music, sphere-descended maid I " 

(8) An expletiye pronoun may be used to throw the 
subject after the verb ; as, 

''It ceased, the melancholy sound." 

(9) The relative pronoun may be omitted ; as, 

'' 'T is fancy, in her fiery car, 
Transports me to the thickest war." 



122 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



(10) Intransitive verbs are sometimes used with an 
objective case ; as, 

Still in harmonious intercourse they lived 
The rural day^ and talked the flowing heart,'' 

(11) Archaic or antiquated words and modes of 
expression may be used ; as, 

^' Whilome in Albion's isle there dwelt a youth 
Who ne in virtue's w^ays did take delight." 

(12) The noun may precede the adjective modifying 
it; as. 

The willows, and the hazel copses green.'' 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

44. What is poetry? How is it distinguished from prose? 
What is the difference between poetry and verse? 45. What is 
the relative position of poetry and prose ? Illustrate the differ- 
ence. 46. What is the source of poetry? What is said of human 
life ? What constitutes its lyric poetry ? Mention some mental 
aspects of nature. 47. How is the poet regarded in a material- 
istic age ? With what is the great poet gifted ? What is Bailey's 
estimate of poets ? What is said of the rank of great poets ? 
Mention some of the world's greatest poets. 48. Why is the poet 
called a seer f What is his relation to his contemporaries ? What 
does Mrs. Browning say of poets ? What is said of Shakespeare ? 
To what class of themes does the best poetry give itself ? 

49. What is versification? What is its unit? How are sylla- 
bles distinguished? What is the function of quantity in English 
verse? Illustrate. What is the principle of English verse? 
What is a metrical foot ? Define iambus. Illustrate. Define a 
trochee, with example. When is a verse or foot catalectic ? Define 
a dactyl, with illustration. Define an anapesf, with example. Define 
a spondee; amphibrach, with example. 



NATURE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 123 



50. How is a verse named? What is iambic trimeter? What 
is iambic pentameter cSilled f What is trochaic tetrameter 9 Illus- 
trate. What is dactylic hexameter? Illustrate. Mention some 
weU-known poems written in this meter, ^^^hat is anapestic trim- 
eter f Illustrate. On what principle may a syllable be added 
to a foot or omitted from it ? Explain the irregularities in the 
first two lines of Tennyson's Break, break, break." What is 
said of metrical irregularities? What is their purpose? Illus- 
trate fi'om Wordsworth and Tennyson. 

51. What is rhyme ? Of what use is it? In what order may 
rhymes occur? Illustrate. What is a double rhyme? What 
other name has it? Illustrate. What is a triple rhyme? Illus- 
trate. When is triple rhyme usually employed? What is middle 
rhyme? Illustrate. What is ^ec^/ona? rhyme ? Illustrate. What 
is alliteration ? What is said of it? Give illustrations from Mrs. 
Browning and Tennyson. 

52. What is a stanza? What is a stanza of two lines called? 
of three? of four? Illustrate. Explain rhymie royal; ottava 
rima; Spenserian stanza. Illustrate. Explain the usual hymn 
meters, illustrating in each case. 53. What is blank verse? 
What is said of its freedom and difficulty? On what does its 
harmony depend? What is meant by ccesura? What is an 
"end-stopt" line? A run-on" line? What French name is 

' used for the latter ? What is meant by period ? Into what does 
I the period practically divide blank verse? On what does Milton's 
organ roll " depend ? Point out a notable difference between 
Milton's and Shelley's blank verse. 

54. What is meant by poetic style ? ^'\'hat is said of poetic 
diction ? Mention some poetic words. State some of the lead- 
ing deviations in construction? 



124 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following selections should be examined in the 
light of such questions as these : 

Is it poetry or verse? What lifts it above prose? Does it 
treat of nature, man, or God? Is it intellectual, emotional, 
or both? What is the poet's idea? Is it commonplace, true, 
elevated, delicate, exquisite ? What is the mood of the poet, — 
serious, playful, humorous, calm, exalted? What imaginative 
features has it ? What concrete pictures ? What figures ? Is it 
self -restrained and classic ? Is it loose and voluble ? 

As to structure, what is the fundamental foot ? Name each 
line. What irregularities may exist and for what purpose ? Is 
the movement slow or rapid ? Explain the source of slowmess or 
rapidity. What is the order of rhymes? Are they perfect or 
defective ? Are there double, triple, middle, or sectional rhymes ? 
Point out the alliteration. What is the effect? Name the stanza. 
Is it blank verse ? Where does the csesural pause fall in each 
line ? Is there variety ? Are the lines " end-stopt " or " run-on " ? 
Point out the poetic words. What is their effect? What 
poetic constructions are there? Divide the selections into three 
classes, — feeble, good, excellent. 

Now all our neighbors' chimneys smoke. 
And Christmas blocks are burning ; 

Their ovens they with baked meats choke, 
And all their spits are turning. 

Without the door let sorrow lie ; 

And if for cold it hap to die. 

We '11 bury it in a Christmas pie. 
And evermore be merry. — Wither. 

Silence in love betrays more woe 
Than words, though ne'er so witty ; 

A beggar that is dumb, you know, 
May challenge double pity. 



NATURE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 1 



Then wrong not. dearest to my heart, 

My true, though secret passion ; 
He smarteth most that hides his smart. 

And sues for no compassion. — Raleigh. 

Father, thy hand 
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou 
Didst weave this verdant roof. Thou didst look down 
Upon the naked earth, and forthwith rose 
All these fair ranks of trees. They, in thy sun, 
Budded and shook their green leaves in thy breeze, 
And shot toward heaven. The century-living crow 
Whose birth was in their tops, grew old and died 
Among their branches, till at last they stood, 
As now they stand, mossy, and tall, and dark, 
Fit shrine for humble worshipper to hold 
Communion with his Maker. — Bryant. 

But since, 0 man I thy life and health demand 

Not food alone, but labor from thy hand. 

First, in the field, beneath the sun's strong rays, 

Ask of thy mother Earth the needful maize ; 

She loves the race that courts her yielding soil. 

And gives her bounties to the sons of toil. — Barlow. 

My days among the dead are passed; 

Around me I behold, 
Where'er these casual eyes are cast, 

The mighty minds of old : 
!My never-failing friends are they. 
With whom I converse day by day. 

With them I take delight in weal. 

And seek relief in woe : 
And while 1 understand and feel 

How much to them I owe. 
My cheeks have often been bedewed 
With tears of thoughtful gratitude, — Southey. 



126 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



It is a beauteous evening, calm and free ; 
The holy time is quiet as a nun 
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun 

Is sinking down in its tranquillity ; 

The gentleness of heaven is on the sea; 
Listen ! the mighty being is awake, 
And doth with his eternal motion make 

A sound like thunder — everlastingly. 

Wordsworth. 

Lives of great men all remind us 

We can make our lives sublime. 
And departing leave behind us 

Footprints on the sands of time; 

Footprints, that perhaps another 

Sailing o'er life's solemn main, 
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother, 

Seeing, shall take heart again. 

Let us, then, be up and doing. 

With a heart for any fate ; 
Still achieving, still pursuing. 

Learn to labor and to wait. — Longfellow. 

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade. 
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap, 

Each in his narrow cell forever laid. 

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 

The breezy call of incense-breathing morn. 

The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed. 

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. 

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn. 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care ; 

No children run to lisp their sire's return. 

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. — Gray. 



NATURE AND STEUCTURE OF POETRY 127 



And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : 

The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfils himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
Comfort thyself: what comfort is in me? 
I have lived my life, and that which I have done. 
May He within himself make pure ! but thou. 
If thou shouldst never see my face again, 
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain. 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

Tennyson. 

All day thy wings have fanned 
At that far height, the cold, thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 

And soon that toil shall end ; 
Soon shalt thou find a summer home, and rest. 
And scream among thy fellows ; reeds shall bend, 

Soon, o'er thy sheltered nest. — Bryant. 

Then from a neighboring thicket the mocking-bird, wildest of 
singers. 

Swinging aloft on a willowy spray that hung o'er the water. 
Shook from his little throat such floods of delirious music. 
That the whole air and the woods and the waves seemed silent 
to listen. 

Plaintive at first were the tones, and sad ; then soaring to madness 
Seemed they to follow or guide the revel of frenzied Bacchantes. 
Single notes were then heard, in sorrowful, low lamentation ; 
Till, having gathered them all, he flung them abroad in derision. 



128 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



As when, after a storm, a gust of wind through the tree-tops 
Shakes down the rattling rain in a crystal shower on the branches. 

Longfellow. 

Over his keys the musing organist, 

Beginning doubtfully and far away. 
First lets his fingers wander as they list, 

And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay ; 
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument 

Gives hope and fervor, nearer draws his theme, 
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent 

Along the wavering vista of his dream. — Lowell. 

And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 

Where the evening star so holy shines, 

I laugh at the lore and the pride of man. 

At the sophist schools, and the learned clan ; 

For what are they all, in their high conceit. 

When man in the bush with God may meet? — Emerson. 

'Twas twilight and the sunless day went down 

Over the waste of waters ; like a veil 
Which, if withdrawn, would but disclose the frown 

Of one whose hate is masked but to assail. 
Thus to their hopeless eyes the night was shown, 

And grimly darkled o'er the faces pale. 
And the dim desolate deep : twelve days had Fear 
Been their familiar, and now Death was here. — Byron. 

And oft the craggy cliff he loved to climb. 

When all in mist the world below was lost — 

What dreadful pleasure ! there to stand sublime, 

Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast. 

And view the enormous waste of vapor, tossed 

In billows, lengthening to the horizon round, 

Now scooped in gulfs, with mountains now embossed, 

And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound. 

Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound ! 

Beattie. 



NATURE AXD STRUCTURE OF POETRY 129 



XOTE 

In addition to the foregoing poetical selections, those pre- 
viously given may be analyzed v>'ith reference to form, content, 
and mood. Their beauty or excellence Avill now be more clearly 
understood. Furthermore, it is recommended that the teacher 
assign brief poems, either from our standard authors or from cui'- 
rent literature, for full analysis and criticism. The blank verse 
of Tennyson, Shelley, Milton, and Shakespeare might be investi- 
gated and compared at considerable length in order to deter- 
mine the average length of their sentences, the place of the 
caesural pause, and the proportion of '"end-stopt" or ••run-on" 
lines. 



CHAPTER VIII 



KINDS OF POETRY 

55. Classification. Poetry may be divided into four 
general types or classes : (1) didactic poetry, which is 
chiefly concerned with instruction ; (2) lyric poetry, 
which generally gives expression to some emotion; 
(3) epic poetry, which is devoted principally to narra- 
tion ; and (4) dramatic poetry, which deals with direct 
representation. All these types or classes have varia- 
tions and subdivisions, which call for consideration in 
some detail. 

56. Didactic Poetry. The term " didactic " as applied 
to poetry involves a seeming contradiction. Instruction 
is a function peculiar to prose ; but in the hands of a 
genuine poet, didactic verse may be so adorned by the 
imagination and so warmed by the feelings as to lift 
it sometimes into the realm of genuine poetry. Thus 
Dryden's Religio Laici^ the first didactic poem of special 
note in our language, is essentially prosaic in theme and 
purpose. But its opening lines, by a happy simile, are 
unmistakably poetic : 

" Dim as the borrowed beams of moon and stars 
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers. 
Is Reason to the soul; and as on high 
Those rolling fires discover but the sky, 
Not light us here, so Reason's glimmering ray 
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way, 
But guide us upward to a better day." 

130 



KINDS OF POETRY 



131* 



A didactic poem, at its best, is apt to be more or less 
prosaic. In estimating its worth, three points are prin- 

I cipally to be considered : (1) To what extent has it a 

'j true poetic quality ? (2) To what extent is it complete, 
symmetrical, and true? and (3) To what extent is it 
correct and skillful in versification? 

Our language is specially rich in didactic poems, 

[[j among which may be mentioned Dryden's Religio Laid 
and Hind and Panther," Pope's Essay on Criticism " 
and " Essay on Man," Young's Night Thoughts," 
Johnson's "Vanity of Human Wishes," Cowper's 

'I " Task," Akenside's Pleasures of the Imagination," 
Rogers's ''Pleasures of Memory," Campbell's " Pleasures 
of Hope," Wordsworth's Excursion," and PoUok's 
" Course of Time." 

(1) Satire is a species of didactic poetry. It is the 
use of wit, irony, and sarcasm to ridicule foibles, vices, 
or evils of any kind. Three kinds of satire may be dis- 
tinguished: personal satire, which is directed against 
individuals, and usually springs from malignant or 
unworthy motives ; partisan satire, which aims to make 
an opposing party or sect odious ; and social satire, which 

i seeks to improve the manners or morals of society. 
Dryden, himself a master of the dangerous art, says, — 

^ Satire has always shone among the rest, 

And is the boldest way, if not the best, 
To tell men freely of their faintest faults. 
To laugh at their vain deeds and vainer thoughts." 

The mood of satire may be various : it may be genial 
and pleasant ; it may be earnest and just ; or it may be 
personal, unjust, and malicious. Any species of satire 

ll 



132 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



may exhibit keenness of wit, but satire reaches its 
highest excellence only when it springs from upright 
motives and confines itself to truth. If there is exag- 
geration or caricature, as is generally the case, there 
still must be a substantial basis of fact. No amount of 
intellectual brilliancy or artistic skill can justify what 
is false and slanderous. 

Satirical poetry is very old. Aristophanes, Juvenal, 
Horace were distinguished satirists of antiquity. Satire 
is found in almost every period of English literature. 
Among our well-known satires are Butler's Hudibras," 
Dryden's Mac Flecknoe " and " Absalom and Achit- 
ophel," Pope's Dunciad," Byron's '^English Bards 
and Scotch Reviewers " and Waltz," Lowell's Fables 
for Critics," Moore's ^' Fudge Family in Paris," and not 
a few others. 

(2) Descriptive poetry^ or the nature epic^ as it has 
been called, may be classed under didactic poetry. It 
is devoted to the description not of successive events 
but of successive scenes in nature. It is sober and 
reflective in character. Beginning with Chaucer, who 
delights in May time and the daisies, nature occupies a 
prominent place and displays an ever-unfolding richness 
in English poetry. Pope's ''Windsor Forest" is an 
elaborate though artificial piece of description. Mil- 
ton's " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso " are nature pic- 
tures that have never been surpassed in their graphic 
portraiture. Other celebrated descriptive poems are 
Goldsmith's "Traveller " and "Deserted Village," Thom- 
son's "Seasons," Bryant's "Forest Hymn," Whittier's 
"Snow-Bound." But in poems of every class there are 



KIXDS OF POETRY 



133 



descriptions of nature, though occupying an incidental 
and secondary position. 

In these nature poems there should be truthfulness 
of description. The}' should be genuine ; not coldly 
conventional, as Pope's " Windsor Forest,'' but real or 
idealized pictures from nature. The descriptions should 
be specific rather than general ; and if, in addition to faith- 
ful portraiture, we have the warmth and elevation that 
come from human emotion or from the recognition of an 
all-pervading Presence, the result is the highest type of 
descriptive poetry. These finer descriptions of nature are 
found in all the great poets since the days of Wordsworth. 

(3) Pastoral poetry is a species of descriptive poetry. 
It is devoted to a portrayal of country life and manners, 
and generally embodies a slight degree of dramatic 
action. ''A pastoral," says Alexander Pope, "is an 
imitation of the action of a shepherd, or one considered 
under that character. The form of this imitation is 
dramatic or narrative, or mixed of both ; the fable sim- 
ple, the manners not too polite nor too rustic; the 
thoughts are plain, yet admit a little quickness and 
passion, but that short and flowing ; the expression 
humble, yet as pure as the language will afford; neat 
but not florid; easy and yet lively." 

English literature is not rich in pastoral poetry. 
What we have is generally an imitation or translation 
of classical models. One of the best known English 
pastorals is Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar," which 
contains imitations of Theocritus and Marot. Milton's 
" Comus " is a kind of pastoral. The purest examples 
of pastoral poetry are found in Pope, who has a series 



134 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



which he calls ''Pastorals." Keats's "Endymion" has 
been classed with pastoral poetry, but it is not a pure 
example of the type. 

57. Lyric Poetry. Lyric poetry gives intense expres- 
sion to thought and emotion. As the name indicates, it 
was originally accompanied by music. Though lyric 
poems are short, they constitute, in the aggregate, a 
large part of English poetry. At the present day 
didactic and epic poetry is rarely written; but lyric 
poetry continues to flourish. Its range of theme is 
practically without limits. 

There are numerous kinds or classes of l3^ric poetry, 
of which we may distinguish the following: (1) ballads, 
(2) songs, (3) odes, (4) elegies, (5) sonnets. These will 
now be considered in the order given. 

(1) A ballad is a brief narrative poem in Ijrric form. 
The ballad was originally the production of wandering 
minstrels, and in its old English form it possessed a 
simplicity, directness, and charming crudeness that a 
more cultivated age cannot successfully imitate. The 
old English ballads, most of which were composed in 
the north of England, depict the lawlessness, daring, 
fortitude, and passion characteristic of life along the 
Scottish border. A group of ballads gathers about the 
name of Robin Hood, the gentlest thief," as Scott 
calls him, '' that ever was." A stanza or two will illus- 
trate their general tone and style : 

He that hath neither beene kithe nor kin 

Might have seen a full fayre sight, 
To see how together these yeomen went 

With blades both brown and bright. 



KINDS OF POETRY 



135 



" To see how these yeomen together they fought 
Two hours of a summer's day, 
Yet neither Robin Hood nor Sir Guy 
Them fettled to flye away." 

Recent poets have written ballads, among the best of 
which may be mentioned Longfellow's Skeleton in 
Armor" and ''Wreck of the Hesperus," Tennyson's 
Edward Gray " and Lady Clare," and Goldsmith's 
" Hermit." These are all ballads of a pure type. 

(2) A so7ig is a lyric poem intended to be sung. 
Songs may be classified according to sentiment or occa- 
sion. In this way we may distinguish love songs, con- 
vivial or drinking songs, political songs, war songs, 
national songs, religious songs or hymns. As with 
lyric poems in general, there is no thought or sentiment 
of the human soul that may not find expression in song. 
Burns is distinguished as one of the best of all song 
writers. Moore's ''Irish Melodies " and " National Airs " 
are bright though somewhat artificial. Among the writ- 
ings of nearly all our poets are pieces suitable for music. 

Our hymns do not as a rule reach a high degree of 
poetic excellence. The reason is, perhaps, not difficult 
to find. The hymn writers are concerned less with a 
free play of the imagination and emotions than with a 
' strict regard to theological or even dogmatic truth. 
But notwithstanding the difficulties of the case, not a 
I few hymn writers have given beautiful expression to 
j their faith, adoration, and love. Keble, Watts, Wesley, 
Cowper, Bonar, and .many others have written hymns 
that give satisfying expression to a deep religious 
fervor. 



136 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



(3) The ode is a somewhat lengthy lyric, character- ' 
ized by exalted feeling, dignity of theme, and irregular 
and complicated structure. Our literature contains a 
number of excellent and famous odes, among which 
may be mentioned Dryden's Alexander's Feast," which 
the confident author thought would never be surpassed. 

'T was at the royal feast, for Persia won 
By Philip's warlike son : 
Aloft in awful state 
The godlike hero sate 

On his imperial throne ; 
His valiant peers were placed around, 
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound ; 

(So should desert in arms be crowned). 
The lovely Thais, by his side, 
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride, 
In flower of youth and beauty's pride. 
Happy, happy, happy pair ! 
None but the brave, 
None but the brave, 
None but the brave deserve the fair." 

Pope's " Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day " is scarcely 
inferior. Collins's ^' Ode on the Passions " is well 
known, though not equal perhaps to his Ode to Even- 
ing." Gray's Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton ' 
College " and Progress of Poesy " are deserving of 
mention. Shelley wrote an Ode to Liberty " and an 

Ode to the West Wind," both well worth reading and 
study. Coleridge's Ode on France " deservedly ranks 
high, and Wordsworth's " Ode to Duty " and Ode on 
the Intimations of Immortality" are almost unsurpassed. 
Lowell's Commemoration Ode " is justly admired. 



KINDS OF POETRY 



137 



(4) The elegy is a meditative poem of sorrowful 
theme, usually lamenting the dead. English literature 
may boast of several elegies unsurpassed in any age 
or country. Spenser's "Astrophel" is a lament over 
the death of Sir Philip Sidney. Milton's " Lycidas " 
is a monody on the death of the poet's friend, Edward 
King. Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard " is cele- 
brated for its graphic description and beautiful thought. 
Shelley's " Adonais," a lament for Keats, belongs to the 
upper regions of song; and Tennyson's '•'In Memoriam" 
belongs to the great poetic achievements of the nine- 
teenth century. 

(5) The sonnet is a lyric poem consisting of fourteen 
iambic pentameter lines. It is divided into two parts : 
the first consisting of an octave or double quatrain, 
and the other of a sestet. The rhymes of the first two 
quatrains are usually the same; those of the sestet 
are variously arranged. The sonnet is an artificial 
and complicated poetic form ; but it lends itself admi- 
rably to the development of a single poetic thought, 
and Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Mrs. Browning, 
Longfellow, Hayne, and many others have used it 
with great skill and power. The follow^ing sonnet by 
Mrs. Browning will serve for illustration : 

" I thought once how Theocritus had sung 

Of the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years, 
Who each one in a gracious hand appears 

To bear a gift for mortals, old or young ; 

And, as I mused it in his antique tongue, 
I saw in gradual vision through my tears, 
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, 

Those of my own life, who by turns had flung 



138 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware, 
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move 

Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair, 
And a voice said in mastery while I strove, 

< Guess now who holds thee ? ' ' Death,' I said. But, there, 
The silver answer rang, ' Not Death but Love ! ' " 

As will be seen on examination, the rhyme scheme is 
as follows : ahhaahhacdcdcd. But the qua- 
trains may have alternate rhymes, and the sestet may 
consist of a quatrain and couplet or of interwoven trip- 
lets, as in the following schemes : ahahahahcdcdee; 
abbaabbaedecde. 

58. Some Criteria. The brief lyric, above all other 
kinds of poetry, should be finished in form and expres- 
sion. The imperfections of diction that might go unchal- 
lenged in a longer poem are inexcusable in a lyric. 
Delicacy of thought and intensity of feeling constitute 
its breath of life, and should mold for themselves a beau- 
teous form. What is commonplace, harsh, or unmusical 
in expression should be avoided, unless such diction is 
wedded to the thought. Concrete and suggestive words 
are to be used rather than abstract and vague expres- 
sions. There is always a distinct gain when the poem 
evokes pleasing pictures. 

As a rule the thought and expression should be clear ; 
the poet should not mystify the reader nor tax too 
far his efforts at comprehension. Browning sometimes 
grievously offends in this particular. While insist- 
ing on clearness, however, we should not forget that 
the mystical and the musical have their place in 
poetry. A poem may sometimes be pleasing through 



KIXDS OF POETRY 



139 



its melodious and mystical character, even when it is 
not clearly intelligible. 

Whether the poet has a distinct introduction, or 
whether he plunges into the midst of his theme, he 
should observe method and symmetry of structure ; and 
in spite of the liveliest play of the imagination and sen- 
sibilities, he should impose a severe restraint upon him- 
self. He should leave something to the imagination of 
the reader. 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

55. Into ho\Y many classes is poetry divided? Xame them, 
giving the general character of each class. 56. What contradic- 
tion is there in the term didactic poetry ? Hott is it saved from 
this contradiction? Illustrate. What points are to be consid- 
ered in estimating didactic poetry ? Mention some principal 
didactic poems. 

What is poetic satire ? What three species are mentioned ? 
What is said of the mood of satire ? Mention some well-known 
satires. What is meant by descriptive poetry? What is said of 
nature in poetry? Mention some descriptive pieces, or nature 
epics. What are their criteria? What is pastoral poetry? What 
was Pope's conception of it? What is its place in English litera- 
ture ? Mention our principal pastorals. 

57. What is lyric poetry? Mention the principal kinds. 
What is a I all ad f What is said of old English ballads? Men- 
tion some recent ballads. What is a song ? Xame the different 
kinds. Who are mentioned as song writers ? What is said 
of hymns? Why are they not better? Xame some prominent 
hymn writers ? What is an ode ? What place does it hold in 
our literature? Xame a few famous odes. What is an elegy f 
Mention some famous elegies. What is a sonnet f How is it 
divided ? What is the rhyme scheme of the sonnet ? Xame 
some of our great sonneteers. 58. What are some of the criteria 
for judging lyric poetry? What was one of Browning's faults? 



140 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



ILLUSTRATIVE AND PRACTICAL EXERCISES 

The following selections should be studied in the 
light of such questions as these : 

To what division of poetry does it belong? Is it didactic, 
descriptive, pastoral, satirical ? What is the spirit of the piece ? 
Is it a ballad, song, hymn, ode, elegy, sonnet? Is it elevated 
and intense? Is it true in sentiment and thought? Is it well 
constructed and harmonious ? Is it clear or hazy ? Is it natural 
or affected ? What is its meter ? 

Of all the causes which conspire to blind 

Man's erring judgment, and misguide the mind, 

What the weak head with strongest bias rules, 

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools. 

Whatever nature has in worth denied. 

She gives in large recruits of needful pride ; 

For as in bodies, thus in souls, we find 

What wants in blood and spirits, swelled with wind : 

Pride, where wit fails, steps in to our defence. 

And fills up all the mighty void of sense. — Pope. 

Of these the false Achitophel was first, 
A name to all succeeding ages cursed : 
For close designs, and crooked counsels fit ; 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit ; 
Restless, unfixed in principles and place ; 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace : 
A fiery soul, which, working out its way. 
Fretted the pigmy-body to decay ; 
A daring pilot in extremity ; 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves went high. 
He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit. 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his wit. 

Dryden. 



KIXDS OF POETRY 



141 



Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, 

And pause awhile from letters to be wise ; 

There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, 

Toil, envy, w^ant, the patron, and the jail. 

See nations, slowly wise, and meanly just, 

To buried merit raise the tardy bust. 

If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, 

Hear Lydiat's life and Galileo's end. — Johnson. 

The groves of Eden, vanished now so long, 
Live in description, and look green in song : 
These, were my breast inspired with equal flame, 
Like them in beauty, should be like in fame. 
Here hills and vales, the woodland and the plain, 
Here earth and water seem to strive again ; 
Not chaos-like together crushed and bruised, 
But, as the world, harmoniously confused : 
Where order in variety we see, 
And where, though all things differ, all agree. 
Here waving groves a chequered scene display, 
And part admit, and part exclude the day ; 
As some coy nymph her lover's w^arm address 
Nor quite indulges, nor can quite repress. — Pope. 

Right against the eastern gate. 

Where the great sun begins his state. 

Robed in flames, and amber light. 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight : 

While the plow^man, near at hand, 

Whistles o'er the furrowed land, 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe, 

And the mower whets his sithe, 

And every shepherd tells his tale 

Under the hawthorn in the vale. — Milton. 

In this, our happy and " progressive " age. 
When all alike ambitious cares engage ; 



142 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



When beardless boys to sudden sages grow, 
And " Miss " her nurse abandons for a beau ; 
When for their dogmas Non-Resistants fight, 
When dunces lecture, and when dandies write ; 
When spinsters, trembling for the nation's fate, 
Neglect their stockings to preserve the state ; 
When critic wits their brazen lustre shed 
On golden authors whom they never read ; 
With parrot praise of "Roman grandeur" speak. 
And in bad English eulogize the Greek ; — 
When facts like these no reprehension bring, 
May not, uncensured, an Attorney sing ? — Saxe. 

In the street I heard a thumping ; and I knew it was the 
stumping 

Of the Corporal, our old neighbor, on that wooden leg he wore. 
With a knot of women round him, — it was lucky I had found 
him. 

So I followed with the others, and the Corporal marched 
before. 

They were making for the steeple, — the old soldier and his 
people ; 

The pigeons circled round us as we climbed the creaking 
stair ; 

Just across the narrow river — O, so close it made me shiver ! — 
Stood a fortress on the hill-top that but yesterday was bare. 

Holmes. 

Jenny kissed me when we met. 

Jumping from the chair she sat in. 
Time, you thief ! who love to get 

Sweets into your list, put that in. 
Say I 'm weary, say I 'm sad ; 

Say that health and wealth have missed me : 
Say I 'm growing old, but add — 

Jenny kissed me. — Leigh Hunt, 



KINDS OF POETRY 



143 



Those evening bells ! those evening bells ! 
How many a tale their music tells, 
Of youth, and home, and that sweet time 
When last I heard their soothing chime ! 

Those joyous hours are passed away ; 

And many a heart that then w^as gay. 

Within the tomb now darkly dwells. 

And hears no more those evening bells. — Moore. 

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, 
The earth, and every common sight. 

To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light, 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may, 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can see no more. 

Wordsworth. 

Abide with me ! fast falls the even-tide ; 
The darkness deepens ; Lord, with me abide ! 
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee. 
Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me. 

Swift to its close ebbs out life's little day ; 
Earth's joys grow dim ; its glories pass away ; 
Change and decay in all around I see ; 
O Thou who changest not, abide with me! — Lyte. 

When I consider how my light is spent 

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide. 
And that one talent which is death to hide, 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 

To serve therewith my Maker, and present 
My true account, lest he returning chide ; 
" Doth God exact day -labor, light denied ? " 
I fondly ask ; but Patience, to prevent 



144 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



That murmur, soon replies, God doth not need 
Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best ; his state 

Is kingly : thousands at his bidding speed. 
And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
They also serve who only stand and wait." — Milton. 

Note 

In addition to these selections the student might classify, as 
far as possible, the poetical extracts previously given. In some 
cases, owing to brevity, this classification will be difficult. 
Furthermore, the teacher might assign particular didactic, de- 
scriptive, satirical, or lyric poems for special study as to form, 
content, and mood. The special criteria of this chapter should 
be applied. A comparative study of Pope's ^' Windsor Forest," 
Goldsmith's " Deserted Village," and Wordsworth's " Tintern 
Abbey " would be specially instructive, as showing the different 
ways of treating nature. 



CHAPTER IX 



EPIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY 

59. The Epic. The epic is a long poem celebrating 
in stately verse some important and heroic event of the 
past. It may be based either on history or tradition, 
though in our greatest epics there is a commingling of 
the two. The method of the epic is chiefly narrative 
and descriptive. The theme is generally stated in the 
beginning, and the narrative, frequently interspersed 
with episodes, pursues an even course. Homer thus 
begins the ''Iliad": 

Of Peleus' son Achilles, sing, O Muse, 

The direful wrath, which sorrows numberless 

Brought on the Greeks, and many mighty souls 

Of youthful heroes, slain untimely, sent 

To Pluto's dark abode, their bodies left 

A prey to dogs and all the fowls of heaven." 

Vergil begins the ''^neid" in a similar manner, and 
the opening lines of '' Paradise Lost " follow classic 
models. 

The structure of the epic may be determined from 
the fundamental conception of its nature. As a narra- 
tive of an important and heroic event, it should be 
simple, direct, and dignified in its treatment. The 
incidents should be introduced in a natural order, and 
their prominence should be regulated according to their 

145 



146 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



relative importance. In an epic poem, as in every 
other creation of art, the law of symmetry should be 
observed. 

But the epic admits of episode. The poet may stop 
the flow of his narrative for a time to dwell upon some 
incident connected with or growing out of the main 
theme. Such an episode is the story of the destruc- 
tion of Troy in the second and third books of the 
^'^neid." The episode may be employed to throw 
light on existing conditions or to add interest to the 
general narrative. In the ^neid " it serves both pur- 
poses to an eminent degree. 

The epic makes extensive use of dialogue and thus, 
in a measure, partakes of the nature of the drama. 
The introduction of the dialogue serves a double pur- 
pose: first, it lends greater vividness to the narrative; 
and second, it lends variety to the story, enabling 
the ancient minstrel, and in a less degree the modern 
reader, to do a little acting. Often the dialogue is 
highly dramatic, as in the quarrel between Achilles and 
Agamemnon in the first book of the ''Iliad." A large 
part of our greatest epics is in dialogue. 

The great epics of the world are all heroic. They 
celebrate great events — the Trojan war, the founding 
of Rome, the loss of Paradise — and bring before us a 
large number of heroes, divinities, and angels. The 
Iliad " is made up chiefly of battle scenes, in which 
mighty heroes and Olympian deities take part, ^neas 
is the hero of the ''^neid"; but back of the tribula- 
tions through which he passes, we recognize the agency 
of contending divinities. And in " Paradise Lost " 



EPIC AXD DRAMATIC POETRY 



14T 



Milton introduces the mighty beings of heaven and 
hell. The epic is thus the stateliest and grandest form 
of poetry. 

There are minor varieties of the epic, which occupy 
an important place in modern poetry. 

(1) The principal of these varieties is the ^metrical 
romance^ of which Scott's The Lady of the Lake " or 
Owen Meredith's Lucile " may be taken as the type. 
It differs from the grand or heroic epic in confining 
itself to lowlier themes, and in introducing the passion 
of love. The metrical romance lends itself readily to 
every form of romantic story. In Scott it introduces 
the scenes and characters of mediaeval Scotland. Byron, 
in " The Giaour," The Siege of Corinth," The Bride 
of Abydos," and others, works up oriental legends. 
Moore's '*Lalla Rookh " is a beautiful oriental ro- 
mance. Owen Meredith's Lucile " is a modern love 
story, while Morris's ''Story of Sigurd" is derived from 
Scandinavian legends. 

(2) The metrical tale may be distinguished from the 
metrical romance by the absence of romantic love and 
adventure. It is naturally briefer in form. Byron's 
"Prisoner of Chillon " and Burns's '' Tam O'Shanter" 
may be taken as types of the metrical tale. On the 
one side it approaches the metrical romance, and on the 
other the lyrical ballad. Since the days of Gower and 
Chaucer the metrical tale has added to English poetry 
some of its choicest pieces. 

(3) The mock epic is, as the name suggests, a bur- 
lesque. It narrates trivial incidents in a stately manner. 
It is not to be taken seriously, and may be employed 



148 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



either to satirize or to amuse. Butler's Hudibras " 
is a mock heroic satire, while Pope's The Rape of 
the Lock " was intended to amuse with its pleasant con- 
ceits and to effect a reconciliation between two alienated 
families among the nobility. Here are the opening lines 
of Canto III: 

" Close by those meads, forever crowned with flowers, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising towers. 
There stands a structure of majestic frame. 
Which from the neighboring Hampton takes its name. 
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall foredoom 
Of foreign tyrants, and of nymphs at home ; 
Here thou, great Anna, whom three realms obey. 
Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes tea." 

60. The Drama. The drama is a composition in 
prose or verse usually intended to be acted on the 
stage. Representation takes the place of narration. 
In order to add to the ideality and interest of the repre- 
sentation, the accessories of dress and scenery are care- 
fully employed. Whether in prose or verse, the laws 
of dramatic structure are the same. 

The two principal divisions of the drama are tragedy 
and comedy. Tragedy represents an important and 
serious action, which usually has a fatal termination; 
it appeals to the earnest side of our nature, and moves 
our deepest feelings. 

Comedy consists in a representation of light and 
amusing incidents ; it exhibits the foibles of individuals, 
the manners of society, and the humorous phases of 
life. The name tragi-comedy is applied to a drama 
in which tragic and comic scenes are intermingled. 



EPIC AXD DRAMATIC POETRY 



149 



A farce is a short comedy distinguished by its slight 
thought and ridiculous caricature or extravagance. A 
melodrama is a drama with a romantic story or plot, 
and sensational situations and incidents. An opera is 
a musical drama, the higher forms of Avhich are known 
as grand opera, and the lower or farcical forms as opera 
houffe. 

The laws of the drama are substantially the same for 
all forms. There should be unity of dramatic action; 
that is, the separate scenes and incidents should con- 
tribute in some way to the development of the plot 
and to the final result or denouement, A collection of 
disconnected scenes, no matter how interesting in them- 
selves, would not make a drama. 

In addition to unity of action, which is obviously the 
one indispensable law of the drama, two other unities 
were prescribed by ancient authorities. The one is 
unity of time, which requires that the action fall within 
the limits of a single day; the other is unity of place, 
which requires that the action occur in the same locality. 
While evidently artificial and dispensable, these latter 
unities conduce to clear and concise treatment. Among 
the Greeks and Romans the three unities, as they are 
called, were strictly observed ; they have been followed 
also by the older French drama ; but the English stage, 
breaking away in the days of Elizabeth from every arti- 
ficial restriction, recognizes unity of action alone. 

The action of the drama should exhibit movement or 
progress, in which several stages may be clearly marked. 
The introduction acquaints us, more or less fully, with 
the subject to be treated. It usually brings before us 



150 



KINDS OF LITERATUKii: 



some of the leading characters, and shows us the ciK 
cumstances in which they are placed. After the intro-. 
duction follows the growth or development of the action^ 
toward the climax. From the days of Aristotle this^ 
part of the drama has been called "the tying of the^ 
knot," and it needs to be managed with great care. If 
the development is too slow, the interest lags; if too|i 
rapid, the climax appears tame. \ 

The interest of a drama depends in a large measure 
upon the successful arrangement of the climax^ or the 
point in which the opposing forces immediately confront 
each other. In our best dramas it usually occurs near 
the middle of the piece. From this point the action 
proceeds to the close or denouement. The knot is un- 
tied; the complications in which the leading charac- 
ters have become involved are either happily removed 
or lead to the inevitable catastrophe. Avoiding every i 
digression, the action should go forward rapidly, in I 
order not to weary the patience and dissipate the interest 
of the spectator. The denouement should not be depend- 
ent upon some foreign element introduced at the last 
moment, but should spring naturally from the ante- 
cedent action. 

In addition to the five principal parts just indicated 
— introduction, rise or tying of the knot, climax, fall 
or untying of the knot, and denouement — there are 
three other elements or factors that need to be pointed 
out. The first is the cause or exciting impulse of the 
dramatic action, and naturally stands between the intro- 
duction and the rise or tying of the knot. The second 
is the cause or tragic impulse of the counteraction, and 



EPIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY 151 



stands between the climax and the fall or untying of 
the knot. The third is the cause or impulse that some- 
times holds the action in check for a moment before 
reaching its final issue, and stands between the fall and 
the denouement. 

The structure and eight component parts of a com- 
plete or ideal drama may be represented in a diagram 
as follows. 




A — Introduction. 
B = Rise or tying of knot. 
C = Climax. 

D = Fall or untying of knot. 
E — Denouement, 
a = Cause or exciting impulse, 
-c Jj = Tragic impulse. 

c = Impulse of last suspense. 



61. Characters and Manners. Apart from the plot 
or story the interest of a drama depends to a large 
extent on the dramatis ijersonae. In the classic drama 
. . the characters are few and dignified ; in the romantic 
■ 'i drama, as first developed in the age of Shakespeare, the 
. characters are numerous and drawn from every class of 
jj society. The same difference is found in the classic 
1 1 school of France, represented by Corneille, Moliere, and 
[1. Racine, and the romantic school founded by Victor 
X Hngo. 

The characters should be clearly drawn and suffi- 
j I ciently differentiated. Each one should have his pecul- 
. i iar individuality, and be reasonably consistent with 
j himself in all parts of the dramatic action. The whole 
[ world of mankind is at the service of the dramatist, and 



152 



KIXDS OF LITERATUEE 



there is no type of humanity that may not be brought 
upon the stage. The ancient world of history or of 
tradition may be represented, or the stage may hold up 
the mirror to contemporary manners and society. 

The drama should be true to the time and locality in 
which the action is placed. The dress and manners 
should be in keeping with the conditions assumed, 
and the tone of thought and expression should not do 
violence to time or place. A Carthaginian nobleman, 
for example, should not ascertain the time of day by 
means of a gold watch, nor should an unlettered rustic 
speak in strains of eloquent poetry. A violation of the 
truth in time is called an anach^oyiism. But in some 
dramas, and in some species of drama," as Ward has 
said, time and place are so purely imaginary and so 
much a matter of indifference that the adoption of a 
purely conventional standard of manners, or at least * 
the exclusion of any definitely fixed one, is here desir- 
able." This is shown in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer 
Night's Dream." | 

The drama should be moral both in tone and teaching. 
We may apply to the drama, as to every other species 
of composition. Pope's well-known couplet: 

" Immodest words admit of no defense, 
For want of decency is a want of sense." 

Indecent language and grossly immoral situations 
should be excluded from the stage. When this is not 
done, as is frequently the case, the drama, instead of 
uplifting, degrades humanity. This fact has brought 
the stage into disrepute with many excellent people. 



EPIC AXD DRAMATIC POETRY 



153 



In its close or denouement the drama should not let 
: vice triumph over virtue, nor should it make the 
: impression that wickedness ever escapes unpunished. 
Such teaching places the "stage in contravention with 
the moral order of the world, according to which, even 
when the punitive consequences are not openly manifest, 
. wickedness is inevitably accompanied with some form 
of internal or external retribution. 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. What is an epic? On what may it be based? What is 
the method of the epic? Where is the theme stated? Illustrate. 
What should be the structure of the epic ? What is meant by 
symmetry? What is an episode? Why may it be introduced? 
Illustrate. What is said of the use of dialogue? What is the 
nature of the great epic? What is meant by heroic here? 
Illustrate. What is a metrical romance ? How does it differ 
from the grand epic? What is said of the adaptability of the 
metrical romance? Illustrate. What is a metrical tale? Name 
an example or two. What is a mock epic ? For what ends may 
it be used? Mention a mock epic. 

2. What is a drama? What is said of the laws of the drama? 
j^Xame the two chief divisions. Define tragedy: comedy. What 
his tragi-comedy ? farce? melodrama? opera? What is the differ- 

^ence between grand opera and opera houffe What is meant 
i|by unity of action? What other two unities are there? What 

is meant by unity of time? What is meant by unity of place? 
I Where are the three unities strictly observed ? Which is observed 
-on the English stage ? Mention the successive steps of dramatic 
-action. What is the function of the introduction ? What fol- 
dows the introduction ? What name did Aristotle give it ? What 

is the climax / What is said about the arrano^ement of the climax ? 
jWhat is the fall or untying of the knot ? Why should it not be 
Iprotracted? AYhat is meant by the denouement f What are the 



154 



KIXDS OF LITERATURE 



three other dramatic elements ? What is meant by the cause or 
exciting impulse f What is meant by the tragic impulse f By the 
impulse of last suspense ? 

3. On what does the interest largely depend ? What is the dif- 
ference in the characters of the classic and the romantic drama ? 
What is said of each character ? Whence may the drama draw 
its characters ? Where may the dramatist get his materials ? 
To what should the drama be true ? What is an anachronism f 
Illustrate. Is conformity to time and place always to be adhered 
to? What is said of the moral tone of the drama? What is 
Pope's opinion ? In what two ways should the stage be moral ? 



Note 

In place of the illustrative and practical exercises, as hereto- 
fore given, it is recommended that the student be referred to 
representative epic and dramatic productions. Besides the great 
epics mentioned in the text, some of the following works might 
be used : Scott's The Lady of the Lake " or " Marmion," Tenny- 
son's " Elaine " or ^' Enoch Arden," Dryden's " Palamon and 
Arcite," Byron's " Bride of Abydos " and " Prisoner of Chillon," 
Burns's Tam O'Shanter," Pope's " Rape of the Lock," Gold- 
smith's " She Stoops to Conquer," Sheridan's Rivals," and 
Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice," "Julius Csesar," and 
" Hamlet." To show the difference between the classic and the 
Shakespearian drama the student should read one or more of the 
plays of Euripides, Corneille, and Moliere in good translations. 
Victor Hugo's Ruy Bias " is recommended as an excellent type 
of. the romantic drama of the nineteenth century. 

Apart from the criticism of diction, sentence, and figure, the 
pieces assigned should be studied with the view of answering 
such questions as the following : To what division of the epic or 
drama does the work belong ? What is its source ? Is it legend 
or history? What is the story? Has it a beginning, middle, 
and end? Is it symmetrical in structure? What episodes are 
introduced? Is the treatment in keeping with the subject? Is 



EPIC AND DKAMATIC POETRY 155 



it true to fact and character ? Does it faithfully portray an age 
or country? What customs are reflected? What is the state of 
society? Describe the leading characters. What is the rank 
of the piece ? What other productions resemble it ? Is it classic 
or romantic? Are there autobiographic elements? What light 
is thrown on the author ? Hoay is nature treated ? What funda- 
mental views of life are reflected ? What is the moving impulse 
in the drama? What constitutes the introduction? Where is 
the climax? Is the denouement natural and satisfactory? Trace 
the tying and the untying of the knot. What furnishes the 
^' tragic impulse " ? Is there an impulse of last suspense " ? 
What unities are observed? What is the length of time con- 
sumed? What is the ethical teaching of the piece? 



CHAPTER X 



NATURE AND FORMS OF PROSE 

62. Definition. Prose is the ordinary form of dis- 
course. It is distinguished from poetry not only by 
more commonplace thought but also by the absence 
of regular metrical structure. Prose and poetry to- 
gether constitute the great body of literature ; but at 
the present time, which is characterized by the pre- 
dominance of material and commercial interests, prose 
forms by far the larger part. In our popular maga- 
zines, poetry is relegated to a very subordinate place. 

The forms of prose are various. They may be 
approximately classified under history, essays, oratory, 
fiction, science, philosophy, and epistolary correspond- 
ence. These classes, as will be seen later, are subject 
to numerous subdivisions. The last three classes — 
science, philosophy, and epistolary correspondence — 
do not come within the scope of the present work, 
but in general it may be said that they are subject to 
the same laws of truth and beauty that govern other 
forms of literary composition. 

63. History. History is a systematic record of past 
events. It rests upon contemporary testimony, which 
may exist in the form of written documents or of 
oral tradition. History passes into mythology when 
it treats of legendary heroes and divinities, and into 

156 



NATURE AXD FORMS OF PROSE 157 



fiction when it treats of imaginary events. Metrical 
chronicles, however valuable may be the historical 
materials they contain, are not to be regarded as history 
in the true sense of the word. History presupposes 
change, which may take the form of progress or deca- 
dence. Without the element of change, there is nothing 
to relate beyond the existing state of things. English 
literature is very rich in historical writing of every 
kind, and in the century that has just passed, we meet 
in England with the names of Macaulay, Carlyle, and 
Froude, and in America with the names of Bancroft, 
Prescott, and Motley. 

As to time, history has a well-defined and generally 
accepted division. This division recognizes three great 
periods, — namely, ancient^ mediceval^ and modern. In 
each of these periods a general type of social condition, 
varying somewhat in different countries, prevailed with- 
out essential change. Ancient history extends from 
the beginning of trustworthy records to the fall of the 
Roman empire in a.d. 476 ; mediaeval history extends 
from that date to the revival of learning and the begin- 
ning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 ; and 
modern history embraces the period extending from 
that time down to the present. 

As to subject-matter, history has been variously 
divided. When it treats of human progress in all 
nations and ages it is called general or universal his- 
tory. When it deals with a single country it becomes 
national history; thus we have histories of England 
and of the United States. When it treats of separate 
institutions or interests it may be regarded as special 



158 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



history, — as church history or a history of literature. 
Again, history may be divided according to the sources 
from which it derives its data. When based on the 
facts supplied in the Scriptures it is known as sacred 
history; when based on other sources of information 
it is called profane or secular history. This, however, 
is only an arbitrary though convenient distinction ; for 
all history, as a record of the unfolding purposes of 
God, is sacred. 

As to form, history is divided into several classes. 
A chronicle is a register of facts and events in the order 
of time in which they occurred. It does not enter into 
a discussion either of causes or effects. It is rather a 
source of historical materials than history itself. The 
" Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," for example, contains valu- 
able facts, but can hardly be regarded as a history of 
the Anglo-Saxons. Annals are chronicles that give the 
events year by year. 

As to method, history may be divided into narra- 
tive^ descriptive^ and philosophical. Each has its definite 
object, by which its treatment of materials is deter- 
mined. Narrative history is chiefly concerned with a 
systematic presentation of the facts. It is satisfied 
when these are clearly presented in due perspective, 
and afford a comprehensive survey of the period or 
subject treated of. Nearly all the manuals of history 
in common use belong to this class. 

Descriptive history aims at presenting a graphic por- 
traiture of the past. Its method is not so much 
narration as description. Men and events are brought 
forward in vivid colors. It makes the past live again 



NATURE AND FORMS OF PROSE 



169 



before our eyes like a moving pageant ; and better 
to accomplish this result, perspective, and even a full 
statement of events, are sometimes sacrificed. While 
narrative history is concerned mostly with the succes- 
sion of important public events, — wars, changes of 
administration, and far-reaching legislative enactments, 

I — descriptive or scenic history introduces, in large 

' measure, the social life and manners. Macaulay is a 
prince among descriptive historians, though no better 
example of scenic history can be found than Carlyle's 
" French Revolution." 

Philosophic history is concerned less with narration 
and description than with the underlying causes and 
effects of events. It regards all human events as an 
outward movement or evolution, which proceeds accord- 
ing to fixed and ascertainable laws. It looks upon 
history, to use the words of Macaulay, as philosophy 
teaching by example." Philosophic history is a prod- 
uct of recent times; and among the best examples are 

Ij Hegel's Philosophy of History," Guizot's History of 

' Civilization," and Lecky's History of European Morals." 
It is evident that an ideal history will be a combi- 

. nation of the narrative, descriptive, and philosophic. 
The first gives the events in due order and propor- 
tion ; the second clothes them in living reality ; and 
the third explains their causes and results. But the 
production of such a history requires a rare combina- 
tion of mental gifts ; the vivid imagination required in 

f scenic description is not usually found associated with 
philosophic depth. Perhaps Green's " History of Eng- 

1 land " and Bancroft's " History of the United States " 



I 



160 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



are as good examples of the highest type of historica 
writing as can be found. 

There is a very noticeable difference between th( 
methods of ancient and modern historians. The former 
it has been said, were artistic^ and the latter sociological 
These terms, while aiming at the facts, are neither 
accurate nor happy. The ancient historians, as Herod- | 
otus and Thucydides, aimed at a pleasing narrative 
To attain this end, neither an exhaustive investigation . 
of facts nor a conscientious abstention from fiction was | 
necessary. Hence we find the works of the one filled 
with impossible events, and those of the other with 
orations confessedly fictitious; but in both cases the 
introduction of legend and fiction has imparted an inter- 
est that would otherwise be lacking in their works. l 

With modern historians, especially in the presence 
of the existing dominant scientific spirit, it is different. 
The first requisite of historical writing at the present 
day is absolute truth, as nearly as it can be ascertained. 
The modern historian is not allowed to draw upon his 
imagination for facts ; he is held to a laborious and 
exhaustive investigation of the sources of information. \ 
He writes out of abundant stores of accurate informa- 
tion; and not content with the mere chronological i 
narration of facts, he seeks beneath them the principles 
or laws that bind them together as a whole. Modern 
history, particularly that of the last fifty years, has a 
breadth, accuracy, and depth, of which the historians ' 
of Greece and Rome hardly dreamed. 

64. Biography. Biography is that department of 
history that gives the facts and events of an individual 



NATUEE AND FOKMS OF PROSE 161 



life. It is at once an interesting and important form 
of history. We have a natural desire to know the 
lives and characters of the men who have in any way 
risen above their fellows, and been associated with great 
social, literary, or pohtical movements. While great 
men are in large measure the creatures of mighty move- 
ments, they at the same time give direction to historic 
development. There is truth in Carlyle's idea that 
universal history is at bottom the history of the great 
men who have worked there." 

There are three general types of biography, corre- 
sponding to the three kinds of history. The first is 
narrative biography, which is concerned chiefly with an 
orderly statement of the leading facts — birth, parent- 
age, education, marriage, and achievements- — in a 
person's life. The second is scenic or descriptive biog- 
raphy, which aims at interest by means of character- 
istic incidents or anecdotes. The third is philosophic^ 
which tries to trace the relation of a person's life to 
the age in which he lived, and to estimate the influ- 
ence he exerted on his own and subsequent ages. The 
first is more common, the second more interesting, the 
third more instructive ; but it is evident that the best 
biographies present a judicious combination of all three 
types. 

The first essential of biography, as of history in 
general, is truth. When we are studying a man's life 
we want to know the facts ; otherwise we shall not be 
able to judge correctly of his life and work. There 
are two principal sources of error in writing biography : 
the first is ignorance, which leads to the omission of 



162 



KINDS OF LITERATUKE 



important particulars or to a misinterpretation of those 
that are known ; the other source of error is prejudict 
for or against the person whose life is portrayed. Thit 
prejudice leads, on the one hand, to such a presenta 
tion of the biographical facts as to magnify the merits 
of the man ; and on the other, it leads to such a sup 
pression or distortion of the facts as to detract from hi& 
just deserts. Both faults are illustrated in Johnson's 
Lives of the Poets," which, though excellent in the 
main, are sometimes defective for lack of research, and 
colored by the writer's strong Tory and Anglican 
sentiments. \ 



Autobiography is the story of a man's life written by; 
himself. It is perhaps the most interesting form of 
biography. In autobiography the writer has the advan- 1 
tage of an intimate acquaintance not only with the 
outward facts but also with the secret influences and 
motives by which his life has been controlled. It takes 
us, as it were, behind the scenes of history ; but at the 
same time there is inevitably the error that springs from 
undue partiality. And though men like Rousseau,] 
Gibbon, and Franklin attempt to divest themselves of i 
this prejudice, and even succeed in a remarkable degree, i 
there is reason to suspect the omission of facts and ^ 
motives that would reflect too unfavorably upon the 
character. 

A diaiy is a record of one's daily occupations and 
experiences. It sustains the same relation to biography i 
that chronicles or annals do to history: it furnishes the 
materials out of which biography is made. When the 
diarist is a man of prominence, as in the case of Dean 



NATURE AND FOEMS OF PROSE 163 



' Swift, his journal throws an interesting light not only 
upon his own life but also upon the times in which he 
: lives. It introduces us to men in the freedom and 
i frankness of private life. When the diary is kept, not 
i with a view to subsequent publication but merely to 
. aid one's memory, it becomes a valuable record of facts. 
65. Some Criteria. In judging a historical work 
three principal points are to be taken into consideration. 
: (1) The first is concerned with the mode of exe- 
^ij cution. Is the outward form of the work such as is 
: required by the laws of art? The diction should be 

■ conformable to the subject, and marshaled in correct, 
] varied, and forcible sentences. The style should bend 

to suit the changing themes. The interest and impres- 

■ siveness of a work, as may be seen in Macaulay and 
5 Irving, depend in no small measure upon its literary 
I quality. Furthermore, there should be movement and 
' symmetry. The progress of events should be followed 
: in a natural order, and the place and treatment of 
(each should be according to its relative importance. 
J As in a drama, there should be a beginning, middle, 
! and end. 

(2) The second point to be considered in a history 
Ijjis the subject-matter. Obviously this is of prime 
I :! importance, for the object of history is the preser- 
' vation and communication of truth. In weighing a 
[iihistorical work, we should consider both the writer's 
f;|isources of information and the use he has made of 
) *.them. Has he gone to original and trustworthy sources 
} jof information or has he taken his materials at second- 
i hand? Has he given them thorough or only partial 



164 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



examination? Has he well digested his materials, so 
that he writes from the fullness of assimilated knowl- 
edge, or does he present only the raw materials of 
history? While delightful and useful histories may be 
written largely of secondhand materials, it is evident 
that monumental historic achievements, like Gibbon's 
" Decline and Fall " or Carlyle's " Oliver Cromwell," 
must be based on exhaustive original investigation. 
And however useful may be the works that serve up 
undigested materials, they cannot be regarded as con- 
stituting history in a literary sense, for they lack the 
element of art. 

(3) The third point to be considered in judging a 
historical work is the personality of the author. What 
is his mental caliber? He should have the breadth 
of view that enables him to grasp the subject in its 
entirety, and to coordinate the facts according to their 
relative importance. Otherwise he will dwell on insig- 
nificant details, lack largeness of movement, and, instead 
of sweeping forward like a river, spread out aimlessly 
like a dreary marsh. He should have the breadth of 
culture that will enable him to weigh the facts he 
uses. This requires familiarity with various systems 
of belief. Whether a theologian or a scientist, a Prot- 
estant or a Romanist, he should be able to do justice to 
the facts and motives of the opposite party. His love 
of truth should be supreme. He should have sound- 
ness of judgment in connection with a clear logical 
sense. He must not jump at conclusions, but base 
them on sufficient evidence. And then the mood, 
attitude, and prejudices should be ascertained. This 



NATURE AND FORMS OF PROSE 



165 



constitutes his standpoint. Most writers have convic- 
tions or belong to schools of belief that consciously 
or unconsciously influence their work. A skeptic like 
Gibbon could hardly do justice to the rise and progress 
of Christianity. 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. What is prose? How is it distinguished from poetry ? What 
is said of prose in this age ? Name the principal forms of prose. 
Which do not come within the scope of this book ? 

2. What is history ? On what does it rest ? How is it differ- 
ent from mythology V from fiction ? What is the relation of his- 
tory to change ? What is said of history in English literature ? 
What threefold division of history is there in regard to time? 
Name the limits of each. As to subject-matter, how is history 
divided? What division is based on the sources of information? 
Define a chronicle ; annals. As to method, what threefold division 
of history is there ? Define narrative, descriptive, and philosophic 
history. What method does the best history follow ? What dif- 
ference is there between ancient and modern methods in history? 
What is the first requisite of historic writing to-day ? 

3. W^hat is biography? Why is it interesting? What was 
Carlyle's idea? What three different types exist? What is the 
chief requisite ? What are the two principal sources of error ? 
What is autobiography ? What advantage has autobiography ? 
what source of error ? What is a diary ? Of what use is a diary ? 

4. In judging a history, what is the first point to be con- 
sidered ? What is required by the laws of art ? What is said 
of style? What is meant by symmetry? What is the second 
point to be considered? What two inquiries should be made? 
On what are the greatest historical works based? What is the 
third point to be considered? What should be the historian's 
mental equipment? Why is it important to know his funda- 
mental philosophical or religious beliefs ? 



166 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



Note 

In place of illustrative and practical selections, as given in 
earlier chapters, it is suggested that the student be referred to a 
few leading works in the department of history. Among those 
that might be used, apart from popular text-books on the subject, 
are Macaulay's " History of England," Green's History of the 
English People," Carlyle's French Revolution," Prescott's 
" Conquest of Mexico," Motley's " Rise of the Dutch Republic," 
Irving's Life of Goldsmith," the autobiographies of Franklin, 
Gibbon, and Ruskin, the diaries of Pepys and Evelyn, Johnson's 
" Lives of the Poets," volumes from the English Men of Letters 
series, the American Men of Letters series, the American States- 
men series, or any other works to which the student may have 
access. 

The volumes assigned by the teacher should be studied with 
reference to diction and style as presented in Part Second of this 
work. In addition to this, the narrative, descriptive, and philo- 
sophical passages should be distinguished. By an analysis of a 
single chapter or of the whole book, the symmetry and complete- 
ness of the author's treatment may be judged. The writer's 
purpose and standpoint should, if possible, be ascertained, and 
the effect upon the work pointed out. His mood, character, and 
intellectual gifts should be traced as reflected in his work. The 
results of this investigation might be presented in the form of a 
written critique. 



CHAPTER XI 
ESSAYS AND ORATORY 

66. Essays. An essay is a brief dissertation on some 
special subject. It aims to present its statements in a 
clear and interesting manner, and this careful regard 
for a finished form brings the essay within the scope 
of literature in the strict sense of the word. The essay 
does not usually aim at an elaborate discussion of a 
subject in all its phases, and it is thus distinguished 
from the treatise. Its origin dates from the French 
author Montaigne in the latter part of the sixteenth 
century; but since the vast multiplication of periodi- 
cals in recent years, the essay has become a prominent 
department of literature. There is scarcely any subject 
of human interest that may not be discussed in an essay. 

The principal forms of the essay are as follows : 

(1) The tracts which is usually a brief discussion of 
some religious or moral subject. 

(2) The editorial^ which is an editor's discussion of 
some theme of public interest. 

(3) The review or critique^ which is a critical exami- 
nation and discussion of some literary work. 

Two general and well-defined types of essays may be 
profitably distinguished. The first may be called the 
personal^ essay. It allows great freedom of treatment, 
and in large measure reflects the personality of the 

167 

1 



168 



KmDS OF LITERATURE 



author. It has something of the ease and charm of 
conversation. The essays of Montaigne, of Addison, 1 
and of Lamb are of this personal type. 

The other kind may be designated as the didactic essay. 
Its aim is the impartation of knowledge and the forma- 
tion of public opinion. The personality of the author 
is concealed behind his statements and arguments. He 
does not write in the first person. In our best writing 
of this kind there is a careful, treatment of the subject. 

The method of the essay is chiefly exposition. It 
uses narration and description only in a subordinate 
way. The essayist usually has some information to 
impart, some argument to present, or some conclusion 
to be reached. His purpose naturally determines the 
mode of treatment. Generally there will be a beginning 
or introduction, a middle containing the body of treat- 
ment, and a conclusion. Very frequently, however, the 
writer plunges at once into his subject without the 
formality of an introduction. 

In estimating the worth of an essay three things 
are to be chiefly taken into account. The first is 
its form, including diction, sentences, paragraphs, and 
arrangement. The various points brought forward 
should be in a natural order, and each should have the 
prominence to which its relative importance entitles it. 
There should be movement or progress in the treat- 
ment, and the essay should gain in weight as it 
advances to the conclusion. 

The second point is the subject-matter of the essay. 
As the essay is not intended to be exhaustive, there 
should be judgment in the selection of points to be 



ESSAYS AXD ORATOKY 



169 



presented. A skillful writer will be recognized as 
much by what he leaves in the inkstand as by what 
he says. In the presentation of facts there should be 
a conscientious regard for truth. The author's origi- 
nality, force, culture will be reflected in the matter and 
manner of his discussion. 

Then, last of all, the ^Titer's mood and standpoint 
should be considered. Is he serious, satirical, humor- 
ous ? Is he writing from the standpoint of party or 
sect, or is he seeking only to know and present the 
truth? Is he thoroughly acquainted with the subject 
that he discusses ? Only as we answer questions like 
these can we enter into full sympathy with an author 
and form a just and adequate conception of his work. 

67. Oratory. Oratory is that form of discourse that 
is prmiarily intended not to be read but to be spoken. 
Its object is mingled instruction and persuasion, and 
it may be defined as instruction suffused with feelino*. 
In its lofty and impassioned forms oratory attains to 
eloquence, — that quality which profoundly moves the 
hearts and wills of the hearers. 

But it is well to recognize the source of eloquence, 
which is to be distinguished from bombast and fustian. 
Eloquence is not a trick of rhetoric : it springs from 
the moral character of the speaker, from his gifts and 
attainments, and from the subject and occasion. Mere 
eloquence," said Webster, '•does not consist in speech. 
It cannot be brought from far. Labor and learning 
may toil for it, but they will toil in vain. Words and 
phrases may be marshaled in every way, but they can- 
not compass it. It must exist in the man, in the 



170 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



subject, and in the occasion. Affected passion, intense 
expression, the pomp of declamation, all may aspire to 
it; they cannot reach it. It comes, if it come at all, 
like the outbreaking of a fountain from the earth, or 
the bursting of volcanic fires, with spontaneous, origi- 
nal, native force." 

Oratory is variously divided, but perhaps no other 
division is better than that of Aristotle. He distin- 
guishes three species of oratory: 

(1) Deliberative oratory, which has its place in deliber- 
ative bodies. In Parliament or Congress it is concerned 
with questions of legal enactment, finance, or administra- 
tion ; in religious bodies, with ecclesiastical questions ; in 
scientific bodies, with questions of science. At the present 
day a large part of oratory is deliberative in character. 

(2) Judicial or forensic oratory, which is heard before 
courts of justice. It is chiefly concerned with human 
conduct in relation to law, and its aim is to determine 
what is legally right and just. 

(3) Demonstrative oratory is chiefly occupied with 
the presentation of abstract or practical truth. It is 
heard in lectures, sermons, and other public addresses. 
It draws its themes from any department of human 
knowledge, and aims at imparting instruction, uplifting ^ 
character, or influencing conduct. 

A finished oration is a work of art. Ancient rheto- 
ricians distinguished six parts, which may still be found 
in some elaborate specimens of pulpit or forensic elo- 
quence. These six parts were (1) the exordium or intro- 
duction, (2) the division of the subject, (3) the statement 
of what is to be established, (4) the argumentation, 



ESSAYS AXD ORATORY 



171 



(5) the appeal to the feelings, and (6) the peroration 
or conclusion. 

It is evident that this scheme for an oration is, as a 
rule, much too artificial and elaborate for use at the 
present day. Modern intelligence and modern inten- 
sity of life demand greater brevity and directness. 
An audience of the present time rarely has patience 
with a discourse of more than an hour, and it generally 
prefers one of half that length. In a modern discourse 
we may generally recognize a threefold division : 

(1) The introduction, which points out the relation of 
the subject to the occasion, or otherwise prepares the 
audience better to appreciate the discussion that is to 
follow. It should be natural, and not so lengthy as to 
be out of keeping with the main body of the discourse. 

(2) The discussion of the subject in hand. This con- 
sists of a statement of the theme and the various facts, 
arguments, and illustrations that are designed to throw 
light upon it and establish its truth. This is the main 
part of the discourse, and great care should be exercised 
in the statement of facts and the arrangement of argu- 
ments. Personal conviction should be back of what is 
said, for without this tone of sincerity the most brilliant 

I rhetoric and eloquent declamation will be in vain. 
1^ (3) The conclusion, in which the results of the dis- 
M eussion are presented. It should be clear and claim 
\ no more than has been fairly established in the pre- 
ceding discussion. On the basis of the truth previously 
presented it may contain an appeal to the feelings and 
, the will, urging the course of action that has been 
! shown to be advisable, wise, or obligatory. 



172 KINDS OF LITERATURE 

Argumentation may seek to establish the truth of a 
proposition in four different ways : 

(1) There may be the introduction of testimony. 1 
By testimony is meant the statements of actual observ- » 
ers or witnesses. It rests on experience, and may be 
given orally or in writing; hence we have oral and 
written testimony. 

(2) A proposition may be supported or established 
by analogy. Reasoning from analogy is that process 
by which we infer that when two objects resemble 
each other in several known particulars they will 
also resemble each other in a certain unknown partic- 
ular. The planet Mars, for example, resembles the 
earth in shape, motion, atmosphere, change of seasons, 
and relation to the sun; and from the resemblance in 
these known particulars some persons have inferred 
that, like the earth, it is also inhabited. 

Analogical reasoning has a prominent place in our 
mental operations. Analogy lies at the basis of simile, i 
metaphor, and personification, which are often used in 
argumentation. We frequently use analogical processes ^ 
in the practical affairs of life, inferring, for example, 
that there will be rain to-day because the temperature, 
appearance of the clouds, and the condition of the 
atmosphere resemble those of a rainy day last week. 

But it is to be observed that the arguments from 
analogy give us at the best only probable truth. The 
degree of probability depends upon the nature and 
number of the resemblances upon which the conclusion 
is based. There must be no point of dissimilarity that 
would disprove the conclusion inferred. 



ESSAYS AND OKATORY 



173 



(3) We may establish a conclusion by an array of 
facts. This is called inductive reasoning. We observe, 
for example, that A, B, C, and all other men of the 
past, so far as our knowledge goes, have died; and in 
view of these individual cases w^e draw the comprehen- 
sive conclusion that all men are mortal. 

But this mode of reasoning, common and indispen- 
sable as it is, needs to be employed with caution. There 
is always danger of inferring more than the facts war- 
rant. When the inference is based on an inadequate 
mduction of facts, the process is called ''jumping at 
a conclusion," — a mistake that is frequently made. 
Even large inductions are not always safe. We might 
conclude, for instance, that, because the bulldog, hound, 
mastiff, setter, spaniel, terrier, and other species we 
have known, are accustomed to bark, therefore all 
dogs bark. Yet this apparently well-founded conclu- 
sion is erroneous, for there is a non-barking species in 
Greenland. 

(4) Again, we may establish a truth by showing that 
it comes within an established and recognized principle. 
This process is known as deductive reasoning. The 
principle on which deductive reasoning depends is the 

I self-evident truth that " whatever is true of the whole 
! is true of the parts." Starting from the general truth 
that all men are mortal, we may conclude that A, B, 
and C are mortal. 

The general truth that supplies the basis of deduc- 
tive reasoning may be taken from various sources. 
Sometimes the truth is self-evident or intuitive, as the 
axioms that lie at the basis of mathematical reasoning. 

I 



174 



KmUS OF LITERATURE 



Sometimes they are truths arrived at by inductive pro- 
cesses. Sometimes they are maxims that have gained 
the assent of mankind ; and again, they are the state- 
ments of an accepted philosophy, creed, code, or othei 
recognized source of authority. 

In deductive reasoning two points need particulai 
attention: (1) the fundamental principle on which 
the argument is based should be well established oi 
recognized as true ; and (2) the conclusion should 
necessarily follow from the truth assumed in the begin- 
ning, and not embrace more than is duly warranted 
by it. 

The general structure of an oration is determined 
by its object. There should be, in large measure, sim- 
plicity, unity, and progress. The language should be 
within the comprehension of the average hearer; the 
sentences, as a rule, should be brief and forcible ; and 
the general style should be concrete rather than abstract. , 
All parts of the oration should be bound together by i 
the single truth and purpose at which the orator aims^j 
The arguments should not be abstruse but clear and^ 
striking. Irrelevant matter of every kind, no matter 
how brilliant in itself, should be excluded ; and ever/ 
fact and principle should be scrupulously correct. 
Understatement is better than overstatement. The 
orator should continually advance toward his conclu-, 
sion; the auditor should feel himself borne along not: 
on a circling eddy but on the bosom of a full, strong' 
current of thought and feeling. ^ 

It was Cicero who said that the orator should know 
everything. However desirable such attainments might 



ESSAYS AXD ORATORY 



175 



be, they are no longer possible; but the orator should 
have a wide range of culture and experience. This is 
necessary to give breadth and proportion to his outlook 
upon the world. In addition to this general culture 
he should, as far as possible, be master of his subject ; 
and to this end he should bestow upon his discourse 
careful and even laborious preparation. Without these 
- requisites the orator is apt to prove uninteresting, 
inconclusive, and unsuccessful. 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

1. "What is an essay? What brings it ^vithin the range of 
art ? How is it distinguished from a treatise ? With whom did it 
originate ? What gives it prominence now ? Xame its principal 
forms. What is a tract? an editorial? a critique or review? 
-) Name two types of essay. What is the character of the personal 
' essay? Give examples. Define the didactic essay. What is the 
, method of the essay ? What parts may usually be distinguished ? 
F What three things are to be considered in estimating the worth 
of an essay? How should the successive points be presented? 
•j How is a skillful writer recognized ? What is said of the 
I essayist's mood and standpoint? 

I 2. What is oratory ? What is its object ? What is eloquence ? 
. Whence does it rise? What is the substance of Webster's view? 

How did Aristotle divide oratory ? What is deliberative oratory ? 

judicial oy forensic f demonstrative? What parts were anciently 
^ distinguished? What is said of this scheme? What three 
I parts are now generally recognized? What is the purpose of the 
^1 introduction ? What is said of the discussion ? What is said of 
^ the speaker's convictions ? What is the nature of the conclusion? 
, What four methods of proof may be used ? What is meant by 
j testimony? What are the two kinds of testimony? What is 

meant by reasoning from analogy? Illustrate. What is said of 
'I its use ? What sort of truth is furnished by analogical reasoning ? 



176 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



On what does the degree of its probability depend? What is 
inductive reasoning? Illustrate. What is meant by "jumping 
at a conclusion"? Give a case of erroneous conclusion. What 
is deductive reasoning ? Illustrate. Whence may come the gen- 
eral truth lying at the basis of deduction ? What two points must 
be attended to carefully ? What qualities should an oration have ? 
Why should the diction and sentence structure be simple ? What 
should give unity to the oration? What is said of irrelevant 
matter ? of movement or progress ? What was Cicero's view of 
an orator's attainments ? What is the advantage of broad cul- 
ture ? What is said of special preparation ? 



Note 

In place of brief illustrative and practical selections, it is 
recommended that the student be referred to complete essays and 
orations. In addition to current literature, in which will be found 
essays of various kinds, Bacon's Essays," the papers of the 
Spectator^ Lamb's Essays of Elia," and the essays of Macaulay, 
De Quincey, Carlyle, and Emerson may be used. Under the 
head of oratory, apart from contemporary speeches and sermons, 
the student might be referred to Burke's " Speech on American 
Taxation," Webster's "Bunker Hill Orations," Patrick Henry's 
" Speech before the Virginia Convention," Emerson's " Repre- 
sentative Men," and Carlyle's " Heroes and Hero Worship." 

The essays assigned should be investigated as to form, matter, 
and mood or purpose. Such questions as the following may be 
answered : What kind of essay is it? Is it personal or didactic? 
What is the theme ? What is the writer's aim ? What is his 
mood ? What constitutes the introduction ? the body of the 
essay? the conclusion? What may be said of the diction, sen- 
tences, and style? What is the order of thought as determined 
by analysis ? Is there symmetry ? Is there movement ? Is irrele- 
vant matter excluded? Is the treatment lit up by humor? Is 
there breadth of view? What is the writer's standpoint? Is 
there care and self-restraint of statement ? 



ESSAYS AXD ORATORY 



177 



In the case of a speech the same questions may be asked in 
reference to form, content, mood, or pm-pose. In addition the 
student may determine the class of oratory to ^Yhich the speech 
belongs. He may ask such questions as the following : Is it elo- 
quent in any part ? What is the mode of argumentation? What 
is the form of proof? Is the argument sound and convincing? 
The student should analyze the speech, in whole or in part, and 
make a synopsis of its principal propositions and proofs. The 
result may be presented in a written or oral critique. 



CHAPTER XII 



NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 

68. Definition. Fiction is that form of prose narra- 
tive in which the characters, scenes, and incidents are 
partly or entirely imaginary. In its highest form it is 
a sort of prose epic; and Homer's "Odyssey" finds a 
parallel in Fenelon's Telemachus." In the arrange- 
ment of characters and incidents to form a plot, fiction 
resembles the drama ; and at the present time every 
notable work of fiction is apt to make its way to the 
stage. Like poetry in general, fiction has its principal 
source in the creative imagination, which, working on 
the basis of experience, modifies or produces character, 
scene, and incident. 

A common division of fiction, though not consistently 
observed, is the novel and the romance. The novel is a 
fictitious narrative in which the characters and incidents 
are in keeping with the ordinary train of events in 
society. Goldsmith's " Vicar of Wakefield," which 
brings before us the simple life of a country pastor, 
may be taken as a type. A romance is a fictitious nar- 
rative in which the characters and scenes and incidents 
are uncommon, improbable, or marvelous. Scott's 
"Ivanhoe" may be taken as a representative of the 
best type of romance. The one form of fiction may 
readily shade into the other, and it becomes difficult 

178 



NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 179 



in some cases to determine the classification; but in 
general the two species are clearly marked. 

69. Romanticism. During the past century there 
were two far-reaching movements in the field of fiction. 
Both came in the character of a reaction ; taken together 

11 they have given greater breadth and depth to this 
department of literature. The first movement, which 
dates near the beginning of the last century, is known 
as romanticism. It was a reaction against the formal 
and the conventional. Romanticism may be defined as 
liberalism in literature; it is a breaking away from 

' authority and a return to nature. It manifested itself 
in two particulars both in fiction and poetry: first, there 
was greater freedom in subject, form, and character; 
and second, there was a return to the past, particularly 
to an idealized age of chivalry in the Middle Ages. 
Scott was the great leader of the romantic movement 
both in poetry and in fiction. In their wide range of 

1; character and incident, and in their idealization of the 
past, the Waverley Novels are in general perfect types 
of romanticism. 

70. Realism. Realism came about the middle of the 
Victorian era as a reaction against romanticism. It 

I was born of the scientific spirit, which rendered the 
public dissatisfied with fanciful pictures of past ages 
and with the impossibilities of wild romance. Realism, 

I as the word indicates, adheres to reality. Discarding 
what is idealistic or unreal in characters and situations, 
it aims at being true to life. All the great novelists of 

j this period — Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot — were 

I in the best sense of the word realists. 



180 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



As an effort to represent life as it is, the worth of 
realism must be acknowledged. In its proper applica- 
tion it places the novel on an immovable basis. While 
idealism shows us how life might be or ought to be, 
realism shows how it actually is. Unfortunately, 
realistic writers have not, in many cases, been true to 
their fundamental principles. The great continental 
leaders of realism — Tolstoi, Zola, Ibsen — have been 
tainted with a fatal pessimism. Realists of this type 
seem to see only one side of life, — the darker side of 
sin and wretchedness and despair. They often describe 
what is coarse, impure, obscene. No doubt their pic- 
tures are true as far as they go; but the fatal defect of 
their work is that it does not reflect life as a whole. 
It does not portray the pure and noble and happy side 
of life, which is just as real as the other. 

Except in the hands of genius, realism is apt to be 
dull. It gives us uninteresting photographs. There 
are times when we do not care so much for instruction 
as for amusement and recreation. This fact opens a 
legitimate field for the imaginative story-teller. There 
is to-day a decided reaction against realism in the form 
of what has been called the new romanticism. It does 
not present to us elaborate studies of actual life, but 
entertains us with an interesting or exciting story. 
Stevenson, Weyman, Hope, and Doyle have been leaders 
in this movement, and some of the most widely read 
novels of the past few years have belonged to this new 
romanticism. 

71. Idealism. The influence of idealism in fiction 
should be recognized. It may tinge the work both of 



NATURE AXD CLASSIFICATIOX OF FICTIOX 181 



roinanticism and of realism. It is, perhaps, to be 
regarded as an atmosphere rather than as a method. 
The aim of idealism is to soften the hard realities of 
life. It in a measure portrays things not as they are 
but as they should be; and as far as it definitely pur- 
sues this course it presents a contrast to realism. It 
naturally chooses for the most part the nobler types 
of character ; and to the villains that may be intro- 
duced it metes out in due time a merited punishment. 
The trials of life are brought to happy issue. The hero 
and heroine, both somewhat above the characters of 
ordinary life, at length triumph over all the obstacles 
that beset their path. Kept within due bounds, ideal- 
ism gives a hopeful and uplifting tone to fiction ; but 
without careful restraint it is in danger of becoming 
false and injurious. It presents to the young a carica- 
ture of the w^orld, and exposes them, at a later period, 
to bitter and dangerous disillusionment. Among our 
greatest novelists an idealistic tendency is very per- 
ceptible in Scott and Dickens. 

72. Component Elements. In every important work 
of fiction there are six things to be considered, namely, 
the characters, the incidents, the environment, the plot, ^ 
the purpose, and the view or philosophy of life. The 
first three elements constitute the materials out of which 
the novelist builds his work ; the last three supply the 
general plan by which he builds it. The excellence of 
the work, as in architecture, depends both on the char- 
acter of the materials and on the manner in which they 
are put together. When Solomon constructed his 
famous temple he not only used cedar and gold but 



182 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



also joined them together according to a wise design 
and noble purpose. These various elements are worthy 
of separate consideration. 

(1) The characters of a novel are of prime impor- 
tance. As in actual life, they give tone to the society 
to which we are introduced. They should be clearly 
individualized, as in the drama, and maintain throughout 
a reasonable consistency. They may be taken from any 
class of society; and writers of large creative genius, 
like Shakespeare, Scott, Dickens, Balzac, will be dis- 
tinguished both for the number and for the variety of 
their characters. It is not enough that the characters 
be described in their outward appearance and experi- 
ences. In all profounder work, as in George Eliot, 
there will be an unveiling of the hidden springs of 
motive and disposition. The great potentialities of 
human nature both for good and evil will be brought 
to light, and thus the mimic world of the novelist will 
reflect the life of the great real world in its more 
tragic aspects. 

(2) By the incidents of a novel we mean the acts 
and experiences of the characters. They make up the 
connected and progressive story. The incidents may 
be as varied as the occurrences of human life, sweeping 
the whole range of toil, sorrow, and joy. They may 
be either comic or tragic. The interest of a work of 
fiction depends largely upon its incidents. Separately 
they may be entertaining, absorbing, or thrilling; and 
taken together in their sequence they may carry us 
forward irresistibly to the conclusion. They should be 
in keeping with the time and place, and the several 



NATURE AXD CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 183 



acts of the personages should be in harmony with their 
character and culture. 

(3) As in real life, the personages of a novel or 
romance live and move in the midst of an environment. 
They are placed in the midst of circumstances, upon 
which they act and by which they are acted upon. 
They may live on land or sea, in the country or in the 
city, amid the wildness of unsubdued forests or the 
culture of long-established communities. They may 
be surrounded by intelligence and luxury or by igno- 
rance and squalor. 

The environment is brought before us by description, 
which necessarily constitutes no inconsiderable part of 
every work of fiction. The descriptive passages should 
be true to fact, and graphic enough to enable the reader 
to picture the scenes in his mind ; but they should not 
be so long drawn as to encumber or impede the story. 
Description is subordinate in fiction ; instead of being 
an end in itself, its purpose is to throw light upon the 
characters and incidents of the story. 

(4) By plot we mean the manner in which the 
'iincidents of a story are arranged with reference to 

the final issue. The incidents may be loosely con- 
nected or they may be so skillfully ordered as to arouse 
the reader's breathless interest. A skillful plot presup- 
I poses dramatic talent. This is not always found in union 
jSvith a strong creative imagination; and thus it happens 
that some of our greatest novelists, as Thackeray and 
George Eliot, are defective in dramatic plots. While a 
jskillfuUy arranged plot is not an essential element in a 
;Work of fiction, it is always a source of interest and power. 



184 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



(5) Every work of fiction has an aim or purpose. 
Sometimes the author merely aims at telling an inter- 
esting story which has no other significance than to 
provoke a smile or a tear. Sometimes it may be in- 
tended to illustrate a period in history or the manners^ 
of a particular locality. Sometimes it is designed to 
throw light on some phase of human character or human 
experience. And again, it may be a vehicle for con- 
veying some form of teaching or for illustrating the 
growth of culture and character. In studying a work 
of fiction the purpose should be clearly apprehended, 
for the merit of a novel or romance depends in a meas- 
ure upon the author's aim and his degree of success in 
realizing it. 

(6) Every work of fiction, consciously or unconsciously 
to the author, is apt to embody a particular view or 
philosophy of life. Every thoughtful person has con- 
victions in regard to God, nature, and man. He may 
believe in a personal deity or an unconscious force as 
the source of all things. He may think of nature as a 
creation or as a product of impersonal natural law. He 
may think of man as an immortal being or as a creature 
whose existence ceases with death. But whatever may^ 
be an author's fundamental beliefs, they will inevitably 
color his work. - 

73. Kinds of Novels. Novels msLj be divided into 
various classes according to subject or method of treat- 
ment. As to method, we have already had the general | 
division of romanticism and realism. Another generic 
classification has been proposed: first, novels of life, 
which include the works portraying both past and. 



NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 185 



contemporary life; and second, novels of idea^ which 
include didactic and artistic works of fiction. The 
didactic novel discusses some practical problem or 

, advances some social or moral theory; the artistic novel 

i subordinates the story to perfection of form. 

t It will be helpful to the student to distinguish the 

i following classes : 

■1 (1) The society novel is devoted to a portrayal of 

5 existing men and manners. The field is a wide one. 
i The characters may be taken from any class of society, 
i The society novel may bring before us, as in Thack- 
■[ Cray's " Vanity Fair," what is known as fashionable life. 
Li It may again, as in George Eliot's Adam Bede " 

or Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield," introduce us to 
the lives of plain people. It may acquaint us, as in 
1 Du Maurier's " Trilby," with the Bohemian or artist 
•I class in our great cities. It may deal, as in Dickens's 
7 "Oliver Twist" or Bulwer's ''Paul Clifford," with the 
t criminal class. In short, there is no class of society or 

6 type of character that may not become the subject of 
^1 treatment in novels of this class. 

^ (2) Local novels are devoted to the portrayal of the 
|; life and manners of a well-marked locality. They are 
social novels within a restricted field. Differences of 
race, of language, of pursuit, and of intelligence, as seen 
in particular localities, are reflected in novels of this 
i kind. There is scarcely any portion of England that has 
|i not been described in some work of fiction. Charlotte 
i Bronte brings Yorkshire scenery and character before 
jus in ''Shirley"; George Eliot portrays the scenes 
j| of her native Warwick in "The Mill on the Floss"; 



186 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



Blackmore's Lorna Doone " portrays the scenery, life, 
and language of Devonshire. 

America has afforded a very rich field for the local 
novel. Not a few of its choicest works belong to this 
class. Scarcely any part of our wide country or any 
special phase of its life has escaped the eyes of the 
enterprising story-teller. In his Grandissimes," for 
example, George W. Cable gives us a glimpse of the 
Creole life of Louisiana. In the "Hoosier School- 
master" Edward Eggleston describes pioneer life in 
Indiana. In ''Gabriel Conroy" Bret Harte brings 
before us the wild and lawless life of California a 
half century ago. In various works Miss Murfree has 
described the dwellers in the Tennessee mountains. 
New England and the South have been portrayed by 
various writers. 

(3) The historical novel is devoted to the description 
of life in the past. It should be based on a careful 
study of the period to be portrayed. It may deal with 
the scenes of a hundred years ago or it may go back a 
thousand years before the Christian era. 

No other department of fiction has a prouder array 
of great books. Historical fiction has gone hand in 
hand with a revived interest in historical and archseo- 
logical research. The greatest of all historical novelists 
is Scott, whose Waverley series covers the centuries 
between the crusades, which " Ivanhoe " describes, and 
the rebellion of Prince Edward Charles in 1745, which 
" Waverley " describes. But other great names — Ger- 
man, English, American — belong to this class of fiction. 
" Uarda," for example, by George Ebers, describes life 



NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 187 



in Egypt a thousand years before Christ. Kingsley's 
" Hypatia " takes us back to the city of Alexandria in the 
fifth century of our era. In the " Last Days of Pom- 
peii" Bulwer Lytton describes the life of the Roman 
city at the time of its destruction. George Eliot's 
" Romola" portrays the spirit and manners of the city 
of Florence in the days of Savonarola and the revival of 
learning. Ben Hur " by Lew Wallace is a tale of the 
Christ. " The Schonberg-Cotta Family " by Mrs. Eliza- 
beth Charles is a graphic portrayal of movements and 
scenes in Germany at the period of the Reformation. 

Recently there has been a notable revival in his- 
torical fiction. It has come, perhaps, as a reaction 
against a hard realism and empty romanticism. It 
probably strikes its roots in the desire for knowledge 
which at the present time is so generally character- 
istic of the American people. Not a few of the recent 
books of phenomenal popularity — Churchill's " Richard 
Carvel," Miss Johnson's " To Have and to Hold," 
Ford's " Janice Meredith," Page's " Red Rock," Thomp- 
son's " Alice of Old Vincennes " — deal with interesting 
periods in the history of our country. 

(4) The problem or p)urpose novel has been prominent 
in recent fiction. It has been a natural product of this 
restless, intellectual age. Fiction has been made the 
medium for the discussion of political, social, and reli- 
gious problems. Not a few of them, as Bellamy's 
socialistic Looking Backward," have had an enormous 
. circulation. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " by Mrs. Stowe was 
I a severe arraignment of slavery, and exerted a strong 
influence in molding the sentiment of a large part of 



188 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



our country. Recent theological unrest is reflected 
in Mrs. Ward's "Robert Elsmere" and in Margaret 
Deland's ''John Ward, Preacher." The nature and 
influence of labor organizations are presented in Charles 
Reade's "Put Yourself in His Place," and in the anony- 
mous American story "The Bread Winners." Hall 
Caine's " Christian " involves a serious indictment 
against the church in England. Disraeli traversed the 
field of English politics in his " Coningsby " and "En- 
dymion," as did TroUope in his " Phineas Finn " and 
" Prime Minister." In his " Guardian Angel " and 
"Elsie Venner" Oliver Wendell Holmes traces the 
effects of heredity, a subject previously handled by 
Hawthorne in his " House of Seven Gables." In this 
way we see that nearly every great practical question 
of general interest may be discussed or portrayed in 
fiction. 

(5) The love story and the story of adventure embrace 
a considerable though unambitious part of fiction. The 
love story deals with courtship and marriage. As a 
rule, after encountering more or less opposition or diffi- 
culty, the lovers are at last happily united. A thread 
of love usually runs through all the more ambitious 
types of fiction, for it is a source of universal interest 
that cannot lightly be set aside ; but in the love story 
it is the central and dominant interest. 

The story of adventure consists of a succession of 
interesting or thrilling incidents. The type of this 
species of fiction is Defoe's " Robinson Crusoe." The 
new romantic movement already referred to lays much 
stress on a rapid succession of exciting incidents. This 



NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 189 



is illustrated by Hope's '•'Prisoner of Zenda'' or by 
most of R. L. Stevenson's works, of which " Kid- 
napped" and "The Master of Ballantrae " may be 
taken as fair examples. 

(6) Naval fiction belongs to the sea. It is an inter- 
esting field, though somewhat limited in its range of 
character and incident. The sea itself, with its mag- 
nificent and changing moods, is a sublime object. The 
restricted life on shipboard — the telling of yarns 
beneath the starlit skies, the spirit of mingled supersti- 
tion and daring, the prompt and brave activities attend- 
ing a storm, and, above all, the excitement and dangers 
of battle — has for the landsman a peculiar charm. 

Novelists of the sea are not numerous ; for, in order 
to be in the best sense successful, the writer must have 
had a seafaring experience. James Fenimore Cooper, 
who had been in the navy, criticised Scott's Pirate " 
as the work of a laudsman. He undertook to produce 
a genuine story of the sea in his ''Pilot," which, what- 
ever else may be its defects, is correct in sailor's lingo 
! and briny flavor. He was no less successful in " The 
Red Rover," the scenes of which antedate the Revolu- 
tion. But the prince of marine novelists is unques- 
tionably Frederick Marryat, whose "Peter Simple," 
"Jacob Faithful," and "Mr. Midshipman Easy" are 
perhaps unsurpassed in their sphere. 

(7) The psychologic novel is concerned chiefly with 
imental analysis. It traces the workings of the soul 
iunder different circumstances and different influences. 
|lt follows the character in its ascent to higher goodness 
lor in its descent to lower degradation. Stevenson's 



190 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," for example, is a powerful 
exhibition of the duality — the brute and the divinity 
— in human nature. Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," 
while in one sense a historical novel, is an incomparable 
study of the human soul under the weight of guilt and 
remorse. Throughout George Eliot's novels there is a 
constant portrayal of mental and moral conditions that 
give to her works an unusual depth and power. Her 
method has been justly called psychologic realism. 
Under this head v/e may place what has been called 
the " art and culture novel," the object of which is to 
exhibit the gradual development of individual charac- 
ter by means of a changing environment. The type of 
this sort of fiction is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister." 

The short story, which our magazines have rendered 
so popular in recent years, is a novel in miniature. It i 
paints on a small canvas but with exceeding delicacy. 
Like the novel or the romance, it may find its materials 
in any age or in any class of society ; and in its general 
method it conforms to the laws of fiction in general. 

REVIEW QUESTIONS 

68. What is fiction ? How does it resemble the drama? What 
is said of dramatized novels? Define novel and romance. Give 
examples of each. 69. What is romanticism f When did it mani- | 
f est itself ? In what two particulars ? 70. What is realism f I 
Whence did it spring ? What are its merits ? What tendency of 
realistic writers is noted ? What is the danger of realism ? 
What is meant by the new ro7nanticism? Mention some of its 
representative writers. 71. What is the aim of idealism? How 
does it do this ? What two great novelists show idealistic tend- : 
encies? 72. What six things are to be noted in every noveL? 



NATURE AND CLASSIFICATION OF FICTION 191 



What two groups are distinguished among them ? On what does 
the excellence of a novel depend ? What is said of the charac- 
ters? Whence may they be drawn? How are great writers 
distinguished ? What characterizes profound novels ? What is 
meant by incidents ? What is said of their variety ? How should 
they be arranged? What is meant by environment ? What envi- 
ronments may be used ? How may they be brought before us ? 
What should be the character of this description? What is its 
place ? What is meant by plot ? What is presupposed in a skill- 
ful plot? What great writers are lacking in dramatic power? 
What purposes may be aimed at ? Why should the purpose be 
apprehended ? About what have thoughtful persons convictions ? 
What is the effect of these convictions ? Why should the writer's 
aim or purpose be understood ? 

73. How may novels and romances be divided? What are 
novels of life ? novels of idea ? What seven classes are distin- 
guished ? What is a society novel f What may it portray ? What 
are local novels f What is said of them in America ? Mention 
some well-known local novels. What is a historical novel? On 
what should it be based ? What is said of historical fiction ? Who 
is the greatest of historical novelists ? Mention some others. 
What is said of recent tendencies ? Mention some recent histor- 
ical novels. What is meant hj problem or purpose novels? Illus- 
trate by various examples. What is the nature of the love story ? 
of the sto7^y of adventure ? Illustrate. What is naval fiction ? 
Why are sea novelists not numerous ? What is said of Cooper ? 
Who is the chief of marine novelists? With what is the 
psychologic novel principally concerned? Give examples. What 
gives George Eliot's novels their depth? What is said of the 
short story? To what laws is it subject? 

Note 

As illustrative and practical exercises, let the student criticise 
several pieces of fiction assigned by the teacher. For this pur- 
pose any of the standard or popular works mentioned in the 



192 



KINDS OF LITERATURE 



text may be selected, or any others to which the student may 
have access. 

After classifying the work and determining its style, the 
student should investigate it according to its six component ele- 
ments, — characters, incidents, environment, plot, purpose, and 
views of life. The points to be investigated under each head are 
suggested in the text. 

As points of special interest, he may inquire into the origin 
of the work and the sources from which its materials were 
derived. This investigation will frequently reveal, as in the 
case of Thackeray, Charlotte Bront6, Dickens, and George Eliot, 
interesting autobiographic details. 

The results of this investigation may be presented in a written 
critique, in which the value of the work as a whole, in the light 
of correct aesthetic and critical principles, should be determined. 
It will sometimes be found that novels of wide popularity are 
destitute of great intrinsic excellence. 



INDEX 



Esthetics defined, 34 ; aesthetic 

elements, 35. 
Allegory, 71. 
Alliteration, 114. 
Analogy, argument from, 172. 
Anglo-Saxon and Latin elements 

of English, 56. 
Annals, 158. 
Antithesis, 75. 
Apostrophe, 73. 

Argumentation, 87 ; four kinds 
of, 172. 

Artistic element in literature, 8. 

Author and his work, 19 ; per- 
sonality of, 19; mental quali- 
ties of, 19 ; character of, 20 ; 
view of life of, 22 ; literary 
school of, 24; mood and pur- 
pose of, 24 ; life of, 27. 

Autobiographic elements in litera- 
ture, 21. 

Autobiography, 162. 

Ballad defined, 134. 
Beauty, 35. 

Biography, 160; three types of, 

161 ; essentials of, 161. 
Blank verse, 117. 

Caesura, 118. 

Character and authorship, 21. 
Chronicle, 158. 
Classic writers, 4, 



Climax, 75. 
Comedy, 148. 

Criticism, defined, 2 ; history of, 3 ; 
standard of, 3 ; requisites of. 4 ; 
as an art, 5 ; diversity of, 5 ; 
diversity of, explained, 6 ; util- 
ity of, 7; materials of, 8. 

Description, 35, 42, 85. 
Diary, 162. 
Diction, 58. 

Discourse, kinds of, 84. 

Drama, 148-153 ; unity of, 149 ; 

five principal parts, 150; other 

elements, 150. 
Dramatis personae, 151. 

Elegy, 137. 

Eloquence, source of, 169. 
English language, composite, 55 ; 

copious, 56 ; elements of, 56 ; 

what elements to choose, 57. 
Enjambement, 118. 
Epic poetry, 145 ; different species 

of, 147; mock epic, 147. 
Epigram, 76. 

Essay, 167; principal forms of, 

167; criteria of, 168. 
Exclamation, 73. 
Exposition, 87. 

Eable, 72. 

Faculties, symmetrical, 92. 



194 



INDEX 



Farce, 149. 

Felicity of expression, 38. 

Fiction, defined, 178 ; elements of, 
181 ; characters of, 182 ; inci- 
dents of, 182 ; environment in, 
183; plot in, 183; aim of, 184; 
view of life of, 184; kinds of, 
184 ; society novel, 185 ; local 
novel, 185; historical novel,il86 ; 
problem or purpose novel, 187; 
love story, 188 ; marine novel, 
189 ; psychologic novel, 189 ; 
short story, 190. 

Figures, defined, 68 ; kinds of, 68 ; 
of resemblance, 69; of con- 
trast, 75. 

Harmony of thought and expres- 
sion, 37. 
Heroism, 41. 

History, defined, 156; divisions of, 
157; methods of, 158; criteria 
of, 163. 

Humor, 46. 

Hymns, 135. 

Hyperbole, 74. 

Idealism, 180. 

Imagination, 89 ; ill-governed, 90. 
Interrogation, 76. 
Irony, 77. 

Life, an author's view of, 22. 
Literary school, 24. 
Love in literature, 40 ; love story, 
188. 

Ludicrous, the, in literature, 44. 

Matter and form in literature, 9. 
Metaphor, 70. 



Meter, 111, 116. 
Metonymy, 72. 

Mind, generic differences of, 88. 
Mock epic, 147. 

Molding influences in literature, 8. 
Moral character, 20; moral sub- 
lime, 43. 

Narration, 86. 

Necessity of understanding a 
work, 1. 

Novel and romance, 178. See Fic- 
tion. 

Ode defined, 136. 
Opera, 149. 

Oration, divisions of, 170; criteria 
of, 174. 

Oratory, 169 ; different kinds of, 
170. 

Parable, 72. 

Paragraph, 62. 

Parody, 45. 

Period in verse, 118. 

Personification, 70. 

Poet, the, 105 ; as seer, 106. 

Poetic license, 120-122. 

Poetry, defined, 103; and prose, 
104 ; sources of, 104 ; classifica- 
tion of, 130; didactic, 130; de- 
scriptive, 132; pastoral, 133; 
lyric, 134; criteria of, 138; epic, 
145. 

Prose and poetry, 104; defined, 
156. 

Purpose of literary study, 1. 
Realism, 179. 

Rhyme, 112 ; different kinds of, 
112-114. 



INDEX 



195 



Romance, metrical, 147; defined, 

178. See Fiction. 
Romanticism, 179. 

Satire, 45, 131. 

Sensibilities in ascendant, 90. 

Sentences, different kinds of, 60 ; 
qualities of, 61. 

Simile, 69. 

Song defined, 135. 

Sonnet, 137. 

Spiritual truth, 39. 

Stanza, defined, 115; different 
kinds of, 115-117. 

Style, 61 ; defined, 84 ; impor- 
tance of, 94 ; poetic, 120. 



Synecdoche, 72. 

Tale, metrical, 147; of adventure, 
188. 

Taste, literary, 34. 
Tenderness and pathos, 43. 
Tragedy, 148. 
Tragi-comedy, 148. 

Versification, defined, 107; quan- 
tity in, 107; accent in, 107; 
poetic feet in, 108-110; time 
element in. 111 : meter in, 111. 

Vision, 74. 

Will, force of, in literature, 91. 



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